An Ordinary Meeting
by aragonite
Summary: Lestrade meets the man mad enough to room with Sherlock Holmes.
1. Chapter 1

An Ordinary Meeting

Characters: Inspector Lestrade, Dr. Watson, Gregson; Mrs. Hudson

Summary: Lestrade meets the man mad enough to room with Sherlock Holmes

There was a reason why Sherlock Holmes grudgingly referred to Inspector Lestrade as "the best of professionals."

After Holmes moved to his admittedly better rooms on Baker Street, Lestrade's first reaction was to give a private little groan. He still ached from the Break-bone fever that had wasted a good third of the Force, and it was too early to be back on his feet. Holmes' old lodgings at least had the convenience of a respectable tavern where he could pause afterwards, and wash the taste of being outdone by the amateur in a gill of the best grozet in London. His mother had always sworn by a regular dose of grozet to chase away the ills in the arteries—she wouldn't have thought it would be her son's salvation as an ulcer preventative.

But—Baker Street was in the opposite direction from the Malmsy Keg, and Lestrade had a very soldierly attitude to the lots life had thrown him. He would just have to find another, equally comfortable shift in his life.

And so he began paying his calls to Sherlock Holmes, private consulting detective and bona fide slight madman.

The first time he came to Baker Street, the housekeeper showed herself to be a stamp above the last, slightly boozy matron off Montague. A proper lady, Lestrade was glad to doff his hat to someone who could pay him the respect of looking him in the eye—and he had a feeling _her _cooking would be trusted.

"Mind you to always knock before you go up, sir." She told him kindly. "Mr. Holmes is an excitable enough fellow."

"You don't say, Mrs. Hudson." Lestrade's acting skills were largely underappreciated.

"And then of course, there's the poor doctor."

Lestrade's arm locked up in the act of hanging the hat on the rack. _He's completely gone mad_, then, was his first thought. _Holmes has finally finished due process of mental law._

"Yes, a good young man, and a decent lodger, but his nerves have been shattered, Inspector." Mrs. Hudson skewered him with her eyebrows. "Maiwand."

Lestrade was shocked. "Maiwand?" He breathed.

"Aye, sir. Wounded rather badly, and took the fever on the way home. Please do be so kind and do nothing that would upset him." Mrs. Hudson took his coat with the casual efficiency of those who know their own business better than anyone else's. "Shall I bring you a cup of tea? I was going to bring a tray up."

"Well…thank you, that would be most kind." Lestrade's thoughts swirled like dry leaves in the gutter. Good God, Sherlock Holmes had a roommate—and a war veteran at that?? He didn't know which portion was more unbelievable. _**There**'s a relationship that will end in tears!_

He paused at the open door and saw the long legs propped on the ottoman before the rest of him. He knew at a glance this was not the whipcord, skeletal energy of Holmes. A step further and the man glanced up from his reading with a pleasant smile.

Completely ordinary looking, Lestrade felt a strange relief, as if someone had to have some tangible abnormal quality to prove their desire to spend more than two hours with Sherlock Holmes. _Come to think of it, that's the most ordinary-looking man I've ever seen. He's all shades of brown--hair, eyes, skin, shoes and clothes! He could be a model for the everyman in the Strand._

"Good-afternoon. May I help you, sir?"

"Good-afternoon. I am here to see Sherlock Holmes."

The man quirked a thick eyebrow up like a gun being cocked back. _Scottish_. Lestrade thought. _No other race in the world can produce such thick hair on the face_. "I'm afraid he's stepped out for a bit, but he might come back soon. Would you like a cup of tea while you're waiting?"

"Thank you, your housekeeper has already offered." Lestrade took a glance in the room and noted the walls ruefully. "I see it didn't take him long…" He muttered under his breath.

The man had heard. "I can't imagine what his rooms were like off Montague Street." He confessed. He put his book aside and leaned forward to offer his hand. "Dr. John Watson at your service."

"And Geoffrey Lestrade to yours." The hand was bone-thin but firm, a short-lived strength until he recovered his natural reserves. Lestrade knew for himself that _that _particular leanness was unnatural. This body should be bigger and broader; he didn't carry himself with the kind of power a small man had. Though the face was friendly enough, open as a bowl, it was because of confidence in himself, and not from a vapid lack of character. There was a look to his eyes, though, that any man on the Force would recognize: Eyes of a veteran. Eyes of nightmares and walking ghosts. The recognition went both ways, Watson seeing Lestrade knew, and knowing Lestrade was a similar victim in his mind. It drove Lestrade to look away and around the walls again. "I say, did he leave you any room for your belongings?

Watson threw back his head with a laugh. "I came with nothing to speak of." He chuckled. "Save my life and _most_ of my health." Humor glittered in those dark brown eyes although that was the healthiest part of him. "And a few vices, which I intend to give my full intention once I'm back on my figurative feet."

Lestrade chuckled softly. "I can understand that. I'm still laboring under the latest epidemic of London. A part of me can barely believe I'm out and about."

"Are you certain you should be?" Watson tilted his head to one side thoughtfully. "If you don't mind my saying so, and you are an _improvement_ over my own self."

"That's a fine way of putting it, but yes. My work makes no allowance for such things as a three-week holiday."

"Ah." Watson's face was rueful. "If it weren't for the wound pension holding penury right at bay, I'd be saying the same." He shrugged. "Not that there's much call for a physician who is sick!" He lifted that wry eyebrow again. "I used to teach the finer points of handguns to men going into Infantry…somehow I think _that_ would not inspire confidence in my abilities as a surgeon either." He accepted it philosophically.

_Scottish without a doubt,_ Lestrade thought. _They're as eloquently ironic as the Irish, but--thank God--stoic as the figurative stone. I don't think I could bear an Irishman in the same room as Holmes.  
_

"Well if you must be about, keep drinking fluids. Water if you trust in its cleanliness; broth, juice—stay away from milk in all forms for now. That could just make it worse." Watson had found Ship's tobacco and began packing away a methodical blackthorn pipe.

"I thought milk was supposed to be good for what ailed." Lestrade blinked.

Watson winced slightly as he put the tobacco on the table--or perhaps it was the strain on a stiff shoulder as he pushed aside a small box of bullets? "The last thing a sick man needs is more mucus."

"Well, I'm not going to argue with that—unless you tell me I have to foreswear my evening pint. Then we'll have words and I'll take back my fee."

Watson grinned at him, and despite the fact Lestrade thought he was dreadfully young to be a doctor, much less a wounded veteran, he was struck by the core of strength glimpsed inside.

"Be sensible in your pints, sir. Elderberry ale would be best in your condition."

"Never heard of it." Lestrade confessed. "I'm a Grozet man myself."

"Then you should have no sacrifice of your morales." Watson blew smoke—not easy to do because he was still smiling. "It's a heather brew of elderberry fruit and flower. There's nothing better for getting the immune system going—naturally I'd recommend a tincture or a syrup, but I've found ale goes down a bit fairer." His lips twitched. "And it's one-twentieth the price."

Lestrade's first experience with Dr. Watson was hardly memorable—but then, most beginnings are ordinary.

"Feet hurt?"

Lestrade glared up at his much-larger rival without his usual strength. "Yes. Yes they do hurt, Tobias. I've recovered from the very same illness you have, and I happen to still be hurting _all over_, but I'm glad you remembered _my feet_."

Tobias Gregson chuckled and folded up his newspaper.

"What the devil has you in such a good mood anyway?" Lestrade asked suspiciously.

"Funniest thing you heard all week." Gregson promised.

Lestrade had his instant doubts: for one thing, Gregson might be smarter than Lestrade, but his sense of humor was often a wholly different language to Lestrade's thinking. There were things that set Gregson off that Lestrade couldn't even fathom.

And for another, there were times when Lestrade comprehended Gregson's humor--and disagreed with it.

"What is?"

Gregson cleared his throat and looked both ways. Of course everyone in the Yard stopped pretending not to listen and angled in.

"_Sherlock Holmes has a roommate!"_

Lestrade's overtaxed nerves cringed at the roar of laughter that washed over the cold walls like a wave against Cornwall.

"Oh, sweet Marigolds in June!" Bradstreet wiped his eyes as he struggled for his breath. "That's the ripest—"He sputtered into laughter again.

"I know! Where in God's name did he find him?" Gregson was leaning on the desk for strength. "_How_ in God's name did he find him?"

"You can't be serious, sir!" Constable Alfreds was appalled at the thought. "Sherlock Holmes likes people about as much as Martin Luther liked women!"

"I think _Luther_ liked women more than Holmes does!" A wag chipped in. "But didn't he have boils?"

Lestrade shook his head and resolutely tried to concentrate on his reading. The problem with being on a forgery case—you inevitably started looking for forgery in everything, and that included the newspaper type you were reading.

"…your turn, Lestrade!"

Lestrade scowled at the finger Gregson had poked into him. "My turn for what?" He stared suspiciously at the hat full of loose coins and small pound-notes.

"We're opening the betting pool on Holmes." Bayard said simply. "Most of us are giving him a month to drive the doctor out."

"A month?" Lestrade repeated. He wasn't certain he'd heard correctly. "Are you mad?"

"Well, we've thought it out." Bradstreet added. "It's not like the doctor can just pick up and move because he feels like it. He's got to find another place to live first."

"And he's new to London, that's certain." Gregson pointed out with that cool, infuriating way he had—it reminded Lestrade in some way of Holmes, but worse—Lestrade didn't _have _to see Holmes every day of the week; Gregson he _did_. "The man got stiffed by a cabbie because he didn't know the straight way from St. Bart's."

Lestrade watched, amazed as the points were ticked off on fingers: Dr. Watson was a veteran and couldn't stand excitement. He was crippled and surely couldn't get around well. He was _clearly _ignorant and innocent of the kind of monster Holmes was, and he _wouldn't _have roomed with him had he known.

Lestrade took it all in with silence, and wondered why that familiar feeling in his gut was coming back. Holmes could take all the teasing and mockery six ways from Sunday—he didn't need defending.

_Because they're selling the other man short_, Lestrade realized. _They're judging him by association. Now how many times have I scolded them for that? Sloppy detective work for certain! _Lestrade's blood was far from boiling, but it was threatening to simmer. "Where there's smoke there's fire" was all good enough when one was a fire-fighter, but not when one was trying to untangle the knots of human nature. Assumptions and their consequence.

He stabbed his papers down on the desk and stood up, the violence of his move startling the others. He reached into his pockets. 'All right, I'm in. Who's in charge of the points?"

"Charlie."

"Charlie, put me down that Dr. Watson is going to stay with Holmes."

"Gorblimey." Charlie shook his head in wonder but dutifully chalked the lines in. "How much are you in for?"

"Five pounds." Lestrade snapped.

It was worth it, he thought in a mean satisfaction—to see their reactions. Gregson looked ready to swallow his cigar.

"Shouldn't you be back in bed?" Gregson demanded.

Lestrade knew he shouldn't, but he couldn't resist smirking at him. "Perhaps I know something you don't."

Gregson scowled. "And what would that be?"

"It just so happens, I've met the good doctor just yesterday." He smirked as he dropped the money in. "And Dr. Watson," he dropped the last handful of half-crowns into the hat, "keeps a loaded firearm."


	2. A Tribute of Respect

_Due to Formatting problems, I have been forced to move the first chapters of "A Test of Professionals" to "An Ordinary Meeting." I am sorry for the confusion that will inevitably result. It really is a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul! In lieu of apology, I've expanded with footnotes, and fleshing-out of characters while correcting mistakes._

**Pot Luck (Christmas 1893; before the events that lead to THE ADVENTURE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE).  
**

Gregson did his best, but a smile crept out of the corners of his broad face as he held the hat that had collected slowly and steadily the tithes of the Yard throughout the course of 1881 to 1893. "Here you are, Inspector. The dubious rewards of a _most _risky bet are now yours." He lifted his voice to everyone. "For I think we all admit, if Dr. Watson hasn't left his, ah…_luxurious_ lodgings with Sherlock Holmes by this point, because of Sherlock Holmes, he never will!"

Lestrade wondered how much was actually _in _there. The sheer weight of coin had stretched the hat in its tenure of confinement as a lottery-bin. He knew Irish Tinkers who would insist on re-shaping the hat before it honoured _their _heads.

"Drinks are on Lestrade!" Someone piped up. It was probably Hopkins.

"So long as **I** get to pick the drinks!" Lestrade shot back, to a universal groan.

"You know those boys carry a fatal allergy to everything but malt." Bradstreet scolded. As his face was already pink from young French wine off the Alsace, he couldn't really scold with impunity.

"They knew the risks when they signed up." Lestrade poked around in the bottom and fished out three of the filthiest florins he could pass on to Gregson. "I believe that squares us for the races, Tobias." He smirked. _Oh, I'll pay for this later, but _carpe_ diem_. He felt justified; with a new baby on the way that Clea insisted was the long-awaited daughter...well, no one could hardly blame him for his attitude.

"Ever a pleasure, Ratty." Gregson gave the coins an askance look, perhaps to make certain the minting stamp still existed, and slipped them in his pocket. "These things had better not melt when I put them in vinegar." He warned, _sotto voce_. "Or I'm after you for plus-interest."

"I accept your terms." Lestrade retorted comfortably, and returned to his glass of port.

The Inspector was feeling good despite the context. Christmas usually carried with it an entirely unique packet of trials, tribulations, and a slightly maniacal energy that countered brief periods of lassitude among the policemen. It was difficult to keep one's mind on work the closer one got to the holidays. Christmas trees caught on fire from the dangerous candlelit ornaments, people's tempers could flare like cannon fuse in their search for the perfect gift, and of course, a little thieving hit new and creative heights in the efforts to make good with their friends and family.

"—so his family asked if they could bring him a roasted bird for the holiday, and of course I said yes. Terrible enough to be behind bars away from your family." Youghal cleared his throat. "But when two sweet-faced moppets bat their lashes at me and ask to take their present to Papa, there was just something a little too treacle-y about the whole mess…"

Lestrade caught himself listening to Youghal with interest. Youghal was _not_ known for his intuitive abilities. Far from it. As deficient as Lestrade was in that ability, he had little on Youghal. While a lessor man might feel smug in comparison, Lestrade only felt worry; Youghal rivaled Hopkins in his youthful exuberance and inability to understand things like departmental consequence.

"…wouldn't you know, there's a little something in the stuffing besides bread crumbs and sage!"

Lestrade opened his mouth to guess it was either a flask of brandy or a ball of opium (the usual items smuggled through gaol), but the room shivered with the peal off an empty platter smacked with the punch-ladle.

"Good…**_God_**!" Hopkins hissed while clutching the jaw that harboured a sore tooth. "This is _Christmas_, Bradstreet! Belsnickle's starts on the 6th!"

"_Who's ready for another bet_?" Bradstreet's face, red for all the holiday cheer, lifted his glass to unanimous roars. "I propose a challenge to see who truly is the best man in the Yard—Gregson or Lestrade!"

"God save us all." Lestrade said without thinking, and proving it truly was the season for miracles, Gregson echoed his mind. Stunned, they permitted themselves to be slapped into high-backed chairs and to the last lowly clerk, the attending staff of the Yard thundered out of the room—presumably to secure the means of the test.

"I _don't_ like the looks of this." Gregson muttered. Despite the flush of a crabapple wine, his face was a little pale and moist from anticipation. "They've been planning this."

"How do you know?"

"Lestrade, for God's sakes, use the brains you have." Never let it be said that Gregson would forget to re-affirm his mental superiority over the other man. "Those hellions put _their_ brains together and in the sake of their amusement at our expense, I've every faith they've discovered something we are _universally bad_ at."

"We could always slip out the back." Lestrade pointed out.

"Already thought of that, ratty1. Bradstreet pushed the W-Z filing cabinet into the stairwell. The only way we can escape this is if we sprout wings and fly up the vent."

"How the—how the devil did he do _that_??"

"I've no idea, but my New Year's Resolution, which I'm starting right now, is not to anger him past the point of control." Gregson covered his nerves by lighting one of his cheap cigarettes. "Maybe he pulled the Warburton file2 out to make it lighter…God knows _that_ took up most of the top drawer…"

"Button up, Euclid. Here they come."

The two Inspectors slapped neutral expressions and faced forward to the coming terror.

They knew it would be bad when they saw Baynes.

Baynes was _not_ popular on the force. It wasn't out of any particular _bad_ qualities he possessed. No one alive wrote such meticulous reports and turned them in ahead of schedule as consistently as the Surrey Inspector. It was just that, of all the men who broke their backs on a daily basis, Baynes' personality resembled Holmes the most.

Somehow, the resentment was compounded by the fact that Baynes never flaunted his skills to his fellow comrades—to non-policemen, yes. Absolutely. _Smugly_, even. But he _never_ did that to his mates. The toll paid in this display of manners was the strain it took on the Yard, which never stopped waiting for the Damoclean Sword to drop on their heads. It was a universal truth that Baynes was utterly wasted in the country, but his lungs simply could not take the soot of London for more than a few days. That he was here for the holiday and standing as judge, jury and executioner was a measure of his loyalty to his duties.

That and a good heavy front keeping the pollution down in the streets.

"Seeing as how this should be a match of fine qualities," Baynes cleared his throat in a mockery of self-importance, and manfully ignored the heap of bobbies who were clinging to each other for support as they sniggered into their sleeves. "We propose a simple test of one's ability to retain composure in the face of adversity."

Lestrade looked at Gregson. Gregson looked at Lestrade. Their palpable confusion (tainted with terror) was quite noticeable.

"The first contestant will be decided by the toss of a coin." Bradstreet held up a rather large disk in his hand.

"That's a slug." Lestrade protested. Privately, his thoughts were elsewhere: How am I going to get back at Roger for this?? He knew that best friends were the best ones for plumbing the soft spots, but really...

"So it is." Baynes noted with aplomb. "And a potential credit to Inspector Lestrade, for noting the latest street-talk for a counterfeit coin." He tossed it lightly in the air and caught it. "I have noted in my studies, that if one were to toss an ordinary coin, the 'heads' side has a slight disadvantage, it being slightly heavier than the 'tails' side."

"We'll take your word for that, Baynes." Gregson said in a strained voice.

Baynes flipped, and the coin was caught by MacDonald.

"Heads." Lestrade said in resignation. Odd aside, he had a fairly equal chance of being humiliated.

"Tails." Gregson declared.

"To Gregson goes the first test!"

A new cheer wafted up. By now Lestrade was really starting to feel alarmed, but at least he could sit back and watch his enemy.

Baynes stepped forward with a copy of the _Strand_. Gregson groaned out loud at the too-familiar publication. "Please tell me this has nothing to do with Holmes."

Baynes managed to conjure an almost reasonable facsimile of injured feelings. "Why, no, sir. Not at all. This is a test of fortitude in the face of adversity. Might I inquire if either of you need reading-glasses?"

"No, certainly not."

"Very well. Inspector Lestrade, if you would be so kind as to face forward so the audience can see you…Inspector Gregson, if you would be so kind as to take this…" Baynes carefully snipped several large squares out of the Strand and handed the first one to the puzzled Gregson. "Your assignment, sir, will require a great deal of iron will—as will Inspector Lestrade."

"Just...get it out, man!" Gregson gnashed his words out through his teeth.

"Inspector Lestrade, your task is to listen to everything that Inspector Gregson reads without losing your composure. Inspector Gregson, your task will be to read aloud without losing your composure. Each of you will take a turn reading from this most fascinating account."

Gregson cleared his throat and looked down. "_An anomaly which often struck me in the character of my friend Sherlock Holmes was that, although in his methods of thought he was the neatest and most methodical of mankind, and although also he affected a certain quiet primness of dress, he was none the less in his personal habits one of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction_."

Lestrade felt a mental groan bubble up in his brain.

"_Not that I am in the least conventional in that respect myself_." Gregson forged on ahead gamely. "_The rough-and-tumble work in Afghanistan, coming on the top of natural Bohemianism of disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits a medical man. But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence_ _transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece, then I begin to give myself virtuous airs_." Gregson strangled to a stop.

"Oh, dear. Inspector Lestrade, it's your turn."

Gregson passed the paper over with relief. Lestrade gulped hard and soon found where Gregson had left off:

"_I have always held_," Lestrade said in a thin voice, "_that pistol practice should be distinctly an open-air pastime…_" Everyone sucked in their breath as Lestrade struggled—hard—to keep his composure. Gregson was slowly changing colour for the worse. "_And when Holmes, in one of his queer humors_—Oh God, I can't do this." He hurriedly passed the paper back to Gregson, who turned even darker.

"…_would sit in an armchair with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a panoptic V. R. done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved by it_."

By this time, no one in the Yard (save the slowly expiring contestants) bothered to stay silent or serious. Bradstreet was hanging off Youghal, tears rolling down his usually sober face. MacDonald had lost the ability to stand under his own power some time ago. Hopkins was nowhere to be seen, but if the Clown Crime Ring of 1889 was any indication, he was probably hiding behind a desk, curled into a ball and giggling like a schoolgirl into the cracks between the floorboards.

Gregson slapped the papers to Lestrade again.

"_Our chambers were always full of chemicals and of criminal relics which had a way of wandering into unlikely positions, and of turning up in the butter-dish or in even less desirable places_." Lestrade froze, rather like a frog in a torchbeam about to receive his destiny at the wrong end of a gigging spear. "My god," he exclaimed. "I'm glad I always had tea when the doctor was present!" Brief visions of an accidental poisoning on part of Holmes' precocious carelessness danced through his head. Watson's presence took on a new level of importance in that light. He hoped the man still had a good stock of ipecac syrup on hand.

This, he realized, was going to be a long, arduous test.

There _had_ to be some way of getting back at Watson for this.

1 In my world, Lestrade and Gregson have taken their sniping to the world of Watson's observations. Gregson borrows from the "rat-faced" description, while Lestrade calls Gregson "Euclid" in honour of his fat, square hands.

2 A tip of the hat to Watson's reference to Colonel Warbourton's madness.


	3. Small Minds, Great Ignorance

Small Minds, Great Arrogance

Small Minds, Great Arrogance.

_Note: This is either in late 1881 or early 1882. I want some slack on this for now._

"_I want that menace to society apprehended at once!"_

Lestrade didn't bother to look up. It was all a part of the job to hear ordinarily simple sentences delivered with an irrational level of emotion. As far as _he_ was concerned, it was barely important enough to note. One heard "that menace to society" _every day_ in Scotland Yard. To be truthful, _more_ than once a day. Quite frequently, in fact. It was always the variation of the same theme, in variations of strident tones and indignation.

He sighed and pulled a fresh form off the top of the stack on his desk. He had plenty to do without dividing his attention with lunatics. A series of robberies by Billingsgate had left the fish-market reeling with both financial and commercial losses. Billingsgate was also reeling from the verbal skills of the wronged fisherfolk. If the East End was the place where corpses were shanghaied to the _Mary Celeste_, then Billingsgate was where the Queen's English was tortured to death by screaming women who had learned the most numbing obscenities on their sainted mother's knees.

_Someday, we'll find out why someone is so blooming-determined to steal cartloads of undersized fish_, he thought. But that was a lame promise to himself; he _didn't_ want to go to Billingsgate any more than the next policeman.

"_Are you __**listening**__ to __**me**_?" The man was screaming now, at the top of shrill lungs that suggested a high and narrow shape. Despite himself, the detective could hear syllabic marks that suggested high education. "_The man is a __**menace**__!"_ Lestrade winced slightly, thinking of the screaming in Billingsgate.

"_**I am speaking to you, sir!!"**_

Lestrade's first instinct was to look at his wall calendar. Hypothesis confirmed: the lunar phase was waxing. If this was any indication, there was some unfortunate aspect of heavenly body in trine or whatever it was the astrologers and mediums studied, because the Full Moon crowd was on schedule and well under way. He made a note to tell Bradstreet to partner up tonight if he was still working the East End.

"**Are you **_**listening**_** to me, man**!! I am standing here, _talking to you_ in a _perfectly civil_ manner, completely **pervious** to understanding—"

Lestrade sighed and stood up. He poked his head out the doorway of his office at the same time Gregson did. _Damn it. One more second and I could have left him with this._

Lestrade labored very hard to prevent certain common, yet fatal errors of investigation in his line of work. Judging by appearances was the most common and most fatal of them all. He also tried very hard to keep his street-English on the street, and his policeman's _lingua professa_ in his office1.

But if any man on the planet deserved to be called a "toff"2 it had to be this newcomer to chaos and injustice that was looming over a quaking Constable Forbes.

"_You! __**You, there!"**_

By bad luck, the man—taller than Lestrade by half a bloody Scottish ell3 had lit eyes upon him, and had seemingly ascertained a plainclothes detective was of higher note than the poor uniformed (yet fully-sized) Constable in his clenched fists.

Abandoning a grateful Forbes, he cleared the room in three long strides (Lestrade had time and the unusual prescience of mind to count), desperate in his hour of need, and grabbed the startled inspector by the collar.

No one past the age of beginning-level public education could possibly enjoy the sensation of being lifted off terra firma.

Dead-white skin barely covered the sickly network of blue veins running underneath, and handfuls of thorny chaff stuck out in finely woven brown wool clothing and even finer woolly red hair, giving him the impression of a man who has trod a sheep-skin carpet before a massive discharge of static—or a strange sort of vegetable hedgehog. Pupils squeezed to pin-points inside pale blue disks gave the appalled Inspector the impression he was being accosted by a glass-eyed corpse, reanimated from some dire murder in a ditch for unknown but no doubt sordid reasons. "_Inspector_! I insist you do something about this miscarriage of justice!"

"_Gkk_!." Lestrade clutched at his no-longer stiff collar, noting grimly that while _he_ was being strangled by an overly affectionate client, _Gregson_ would inherit the mantle of Scotland Yard's best _and_ a good caseload simply for doing nothing but stand there and gape like a bloody idiot gibbon.

"If you would—(gasp)--_unhand me first, sir_, we can see to the nature of your—(inhale) complaint!"

The tall, hedge-row man stared at him with his awful eyes for a moment before abruptly releasing his grip. Lestrade was never so glad to feel boards under his feet—and _he'd_ been thrown out of a hayloft by sadistic older brothers in his 'halcyon' youth.

"I beg your pardon." The newcomer said stiffly. "There are times when I don't know my strength." He was obviously condescending to an inferior. There was an unmistakable implication that a true example of manhood would die before complaining; that was the English Ideal.

_Wonderful_. They were dealing with the gentry. No other race was capable of _that_ combination of stupidity and privilege.

Lestrade struggled to return his collar to its previous state, and due to sheer force of will, managed _not_ to make a cutting or sarcastic comment. "You are, sir?"

"I am the Honourable James Norton, Squire of Norton!" The living corpse announced. "And I have been most wrongly treated by one of your lackeys!"

"_Lackeys_?" Lestrade repeated in horror as Gregson took a hasty step forward. Lestrade wasn't often grateful for Gregson, but this _might_ be such an occasion—this entire situation had mayhem writ all over it, and Gregson was not known for his losses in fisticuffs.

As it was, Gregson's large hands were flexing as though he were mentally reviewing the procedure for slapping manacles on someone who thoroughly deserved it. Or locking them around an officious stiff neck. "Perhaps if you start at the beginning, sir?"

"Certainly I will!" Squire Norton expostulated. "To begin with, I—_Stop that man! __**There he is**__!"_

The Squire lowered a finger as long as a ship's boom across the room to a startled Dr. Watson who was just entering the offices with Sherlock Holmes' promised file on the Arlington Case.

Lestrade mused that _surely_ his day could only improve past this point. _Statistically_…

"You, there! Sir!"

Squire Norton waded back through the bewildered crowd of detectives and even more confused uniforms (constables hadn't yet learned the art of pretense, more's pity). "I have you, you scoundrel!"

"What the devil?" Dr. Watson exclaimed. It was exactly what half the Force was thinking at that moment.

"You struck my horse, you black-faced barbarian!1" The Squire latched two massive hands on the doctor like twin grappling hooks and hoisted him in the air, slamming his back into the wall by the door. A framed lithograph of the Prime Minister fell to the floor and spilled broken glass all over Holmes' folder.

Behind Lestrade, Gregson groaned softly. "_Please, God, don't let him touch Watson's bad shoulder!"_

"_Squire Norton_!" Lestrade bellowed with a strength rooted in a very real danger. "_You are within Scotland Yard, sir! I suggest you lower the doctor at once_!"

"I assure you, _squire_!" Watson was snarling back, using the title like the world's worst insult, as if someone had forgotten to inform him he was in the grip of a man who was twice his mass, half his intelligence, a fraction of his composure, _and_ who was suspending him in the air to boot. "I had no choice!"

"Oh, _hell_." Bradstreet groaned. "Soldiers and their unimpeachable sense of honor."

No one was even pretending to stay ignorant now. Lestrade was comforted that there were about twenty able-bodied men on their lunch time in the halls.

"At least he's not Irish." MacDonald pointed out the obvious as he joined Bradstreet in circling the tableau.

"No, he's a _Berkshire_." Bradstreet pointed out. "What the hell else have they got to lose?"

"Squire Norton!" Lestrade bellowed at the top of his lungs. It actually paused speech and movement in the Yard.

Norton stared over his shoulder at Lestrade, then slow realization crept over his face for a second time, and then he _gradually _lowered Watson to the ground—but did not let go of him. Nor did Watson let go of his grip on his walking stick. Lestrade breathed half a sigh of relief—the other half was for when he actually let go of the doctor.

"You can release the doctor, Squire Norton." Lestrade said thinly. "No one can go in and out of Scotland Yard without our say."

"I'll not release him until I see him behind bars." Norton snarled.

_Country squires with delusions of monarchy_. Lestrade felt Gregson's inward moan as clear as his own. For all the travails of working the slums and dreck of humanity in London, it was far preferable to dealing with the pampered low-grade nobility that thought they were their own law and insisted on being saluted with the forelock. The last time a country squire had been arrested for a crime, the idiot had tried to sue them for "treating him like anyone else." Gregson had cracked a murder five years ago where a country baronet had thought himself perfectly justified in conducting personal executions—Gregson hadn't been the same man since.

Gregson leaned to Lestrade and spoke from the side of his mouth. "Is this a hostage situation?"

"It will be if he doesn't let go!" Lestrade exclaimed.

"_I'll say my say first!"_ Squire Norton roared.

Gregson made as if to step into the blooming fray but Lestrade's sense of duty bade him stop the other man. "Tobias, it's very, _very_ clear this man does not know his own strength." He hissed. "Look at his eyes! Whatever he's taking, I believe he's gone past the realm of discretion."

Gregson swallowed hard. "_Right_. Anybody got a life-preserver handy?" He eyed the large man dubiously. "Several dozen shillelaghs2? A Gatlin gun?"

Lestrade cleared his throat. "Very well, then, Squire Norton. We are prepared to hear you…'say your say'" He pulled out his notebook and pencil. _When in doubt, bluff like hell._ "Now if you please?"

A calm voice and demeanor, not to mention a refusal to acknowledge when someone is being a 24-karat lunatic is the usual way to creating peace.

Naturally there would be an exception to the rule on a Monday morning.

"I was conducting my rounds on the edge of my estate when that—when this _scoundrel_-" Before anyone could breathe, Watson was airborne again—_whud_--a paperweight joined the Prime Minister on the floor. "Struck my horse in the face! He nearly _blinded_ my good Arabian!"

"Which I was forced to do when it was clear you would not swerve to avoid that child on the road!" Watson roared back. He _did_ have a good voice for roaring, Lestrade had to admit. "For the love of god! It was a small boy!"

"If a trespasser is old enough to make honest wages on the street, they're old enough to bear the consequences of their actions!4"

"He'd run off the border of your property to the road! A road is right of way!" Watson displayed a hitherto-fore unsuspected knack for judicial facts—he probably _had_ to, as Holmes conveniently forgot legal boundaries as often as he did basic manners.

"You'll never be able to prove a thing!" Squire Norton's neck-tendons began to thrust out from under his skin. He began shaking Watson—but due to Watson's fully recovered weight as an athlete, the shaking was in slow motion. Youghal began pulling the rest of the frames off the wall. "But I can prove you struck my horse!"

"PUT DR. WATSON DOWN OR SO HELP ME I'LL HAVE YOU UP ON CHARGES FOR NOT PAYING RESPECT TO THE CROWN!"

Lestrade knew his throat would be raw for a day; the windows were ringing, but it got the job done. That strange look came to Norton's face again as he realized where he was, and Watson's feet met the floor for the second time.

"Dr. Watson, one thing at a time. It could be a serious charge of assault." Gregson pointed out shakily. "A man's blackthorn stick against a horse's head—"

"Inspector, please!" Watson stared at him. "I did _not_ hit his horse with _my stick_!" Spots of colour stained his face. The doctor was displaying a _temper_. "See for yourself!"

Lestrade silently took the stick in question, and had to admit there were no signs of mayhem on the sides. He passed it on to Gregson—some instinct suggested he should be keeping his hands free. "Well, if you didn't hit him with your stick, how did—" Lestrade strangled as Watson lifted his good arm. His knuckles were bruised. "Dr. Watson, are we to believe you struck a horse in the head with your _fist_?"

Watson looked at him the way Holmes did when someone said something inexplicably strange. "I couldn't reach the reins." He pointed out. "And I didn't have time to get the boy out of the way. I ran into the horse, struck him in the head below his eye, and it ran straight into a gorse bush where he dropped Squire Norton."

"Bah! I'll see you up on charges for this!" Norton finger-stabbed Watson's shoulder.

Watson's _bad_ shoulder.

Watson turned white. "Get." He said softly. "Your hands off me and do not touch me again, sir."

_I'd listen to him if I were you, sir_. Lestrade thought.

"Hah!" Norton gloated. "You'd threaten me in front of the authorities?" (Lestrade wondered why _now_, of all times, Norton would admit the Yard was the authority). "I _challenge_ you, sir." He poked the shocked doctor's shoulder again. "D'you hear me? I _challenge_ you."

-

**Thirty second and a loud collision later:**

"Well, _that_ didn't take long." Gregson commented as Bradstreet knelt to take Norton's pulse.

"Never does, does it." Lestrade patted down his pockets for his matchbox. He _truly_ needed a smoke. Youghal, poor little sod, was helping a still-smouldering Watson to a seat with a bowl of ice for his knuckles. They had to step around Briggs, who was finally attending to Holmes' battered casefile.

"I'll _never_ understand why people attempt to molest rugby players." Lestrade exhaled a ring of smoke. "It's not like they're going to run home crying when they get hurt. I've always felt that's how they say hello on the field." His eyes widened as Bradstreet pointed to the sleeve he had just pulled up. The exposed forearm was tracked with not-very-small needle marks.3

"They say hello by shin-kicking?"

"Well, no. I believe the official term is 'fittygomash.' Lestrade pulled smoke into his lungs with a sigh of relief, then caught Gregson's stare. "Bradstreet! What's the official word for kicking someone in the shins in combat?"

"Fittygomash, Lestrade."

"So now what?" Gregson wondered. "When he wakes up, he'll be in a fell mood for certain."

Lestrade grumbled about being saddled with a case on top of his usual workload but Gregson ignored him. He was paging through a booklet on procedures for subduing drug-inspired malcontents. "Well, here's the thing." Lestrade said finally. "He challenged the doctor in a room full of witnesses."

"This is true." Gregson folded his arms to his chest. "Then there's the fact that our good Squire is obviously under some kind of drug. If he hadn't picked his attention to Watson, he would have been on you—that's how it _was_ until Watson showed up."

Lestrade shuddered. "There's one deduction of yours I won't argue with, Tobias. I don't know. If you ask me it looked like Dr. Watson circumvented a hostage situation exacerbated by the perpetrator's confusion of his senses due to a foreign substance in his system…which may or may not have been willingly induced. We'll have the P.S. look him over and see what it is—what are you _doing_?"

Gregson had stepped to his office. He re-emerged with the lottery hat in his hands. "I'm going to pass this around again." He announced. "We need a few more pounds to cover the potential cost of a charge of assault. Hanged if I'm going to let Watson pull that out of his own pocket."

"You think he'll _let_ us soak the fee?" Lestrade said doubtfully.

"What, are _you_ going to tell him?" Gregson shook the badly-shapen bowl. "And if there's no charges, we can use this for the Christmas party. Just think of all the geese we could get."

Lestrade scowled and fished in his pockets. "You're not going to tell anyone we're working together again, are you?"

"Mebbe." Gregson scratched his ear. "If you wouldn't mind answering a question for me, seein' as you were the one in charge of the hostage situation."

"Oh?" Lestrade cocked an eyebrow like a gun.

"You know, you _could_ have warned the Squire about touching Watson at his war wound... t would have been the civil thing to do."

"Yes…"

Lestrade finally let a smirk crawl over his face. "Yes, it would have been the civil thing to do, wouldn't it?"

-

"There you are, doctor." Youghal shook his head as he produced a roll of gauze. "Are you ready for the next step?"

"As much as I'll ever be." Watson grumbled. Despite all efforts, his temper had not seemed to improve since his return to the country of his birth since Maiwand.

Dash it all…

He shook his hand dry with a grimace and held his fingers straight. A sound caused them to look deeper into the room. Gregson and Lestrade were holding a battered hat between them and laughing into each other's faces. "Now there's something I don't see every day." He commented. In all honesty, he didn't know what else he _could_ say.

"You and the rest of Scotland Yard, doctor." Youghal said uneasily. "Don't ask me to explain it. When they laugh together, someone's usually in trouble."

1 Professional English. Lestrade is being ironic.

2 My personal definition is someone who it too rich and powerful to be called a sissy.

3 Ell. 45 inches, originally the length of the arm, but the Scottish ell was 37.2 inches.

4 Which was as young as five.

1 Be really careful with this. 'black-faced' could very easily be used to denigrate someone who was forced to gain their livelihood from hours outdoors, like in farming or similar work.

2 Blackthorn stick, used as a club in self-defense. Blackthorn is as hard and dense as the most stubborn person's head in combat…

3 Let me state this very clearly for the record. While many drugs were legal back then, the behavior that could be inspired from said drugs was not. An interesting reversal on some people who use the pharmaceutical version of, "the devil made me do it.


	4. Daft Days

Lestrade suffers an ordeal worse than working with Sherlock Holmes: Charity benefits

_Lestrade suffers an ordeal worse than working with Sherlock Holmes: Charity benefits._

**Daft Days**

Bradstreet swept into the wretched mess that was Scotland Yard in London the day after a heavy snowfall on top of a dense, slimy, yellow-tinged coal-fired fog. His arrival had been expected for some days, but mercifully postponed by a minor lung infection that had kept him under doctor's orders to stay inside out of the air-born soot.

Bradstreet's convalescence had been treated with all due sympathy for a fellow Yarder; but that didn't mean anyone was going to stick around to wish him back. By the time the big man had pulled off his Froggy-style coat and his pointed cap1, the main rooms were depopulated of all but those who were forced to work there…and the unlucky.

"Damn it!"

Lestrade was not only ignorant of Bradstreet's arrival; he was _blissfully_ ignorant. He gritted his teeth and struggled furiously with his wet shoelaces. Snow-sogged cordage simply had no gripping power. _Damn the cheap sisal fibres right off the cock anyway_. He pulled everything apart and tried again, just as a series of quick foot-thuds passed him and a racing Gregson, doing a fair imitation of the 12:45 out of Paddington, slammed the door to his office with a racketing thud.

The last time Lestrade had seen his worst rival move that quickly, gunfire on the wrong side of the Gasworks had been involved.

Lestrade looked up. And up. His eyes locked into Bradstreet's.

"_Oh_." He gulped. "Welcome back, Bradstreet." He said thinly. He didn't mean it, of course.

Bradstreet's face crimped like an overdone pie in the oven. "You didn't put your name to the Hogmanay, Geoffrey." The use of his first name was the first, deliberate, skillful thrust in what was going to be a short and bloody defeat.

Lestrade had reviewed the list of potential comebacks days ago. Now that Bradstreet was actually here, he almost felt a sense of relief that the gloves could come off and he could get to it. "Bradstreet…I really do feel like I'm a little pressed for time this year."

"Have a pity, sir." Constable Lions popped up. "This is his first Christmas as a married man—and his wife being on confinement and all, she might do some kind of grievous harm on him if she found he was going to be out."

Bradstreet glared only slightly, but Lions promptly slunk backwards. "This is for CHARITY." He announced in a cavernous tone—rather like a churchbell carved out of limestone.

"Why can't you use Gregson?!" Lestrade asked desperately.

"Gregson??" Bradstreet was horrified. "My good man, Hogmanay means a dark-haired stranger must visit each household for said household to receive blessings for the year. I specifically say, '_dark-haired'_" Bradstreet slapped paws the size of badminton rackets on Lestrade's shoulders and stared him poignantly in the eye. "Do you know why it has to be a dark-haired man?" He wanted to know.

Lestrade closed his eyes. "No," he sighed.

"Because a blond or ginger-man could be a Viking." Bradstreet leaned into Lestrade's face. "_You cannot have a sodding __**Viking**__ in a __Scottish__ Festival!!"_

Lestrade winced.

"I thought they had blond men for the _Up Helly A_." Barnes said under his breath.

Bradstreet heard. He whirled like a whip. _"The Shetlands are __**not**__ Scotland!" _He roared_. "The Shetlands are where the Diaspora of destitution floats to, to eke out a miserable existence among stunted dogs and smart sheep! The Shetlands might be allocated as part of Scotland since the 14__th__ century, __**but no one who knew any better voted for it**_**!**"

"Look, if you need a stranger, why _do you need_ _me_?" Lestrade suddenly latched on to divine inspiration. "First of all, let's list the facts. You may not be aware of this, but the Lestrades are _French_ in origin. In fact, we're not even _respectable_ French—redundant grammar though that might be to some of you—"The little Inspector neatly beat Gregson to the punch, to the big man's pout. "We were _actors1_, for heaven's sake!—2

"—creating a codicil on that, Hogmanay should really be making use of blooded _Scotsmen_. I'll grant you the French are not normally at war with Scotland, but that doesn't mean we have anything more in common than an ability to make dinner out of things most people would avoid like a plague!" Lestrade felt his confidence grow as he spoke. What felt like a lifetime of mental arguments was piling to the fore now. If only Bradstreet would let him finish.

"Secondly, Hogmanay needs a _dark-haired stranger_ to do the rounds. _I am not a stranger_! I am a fellow Inspector! We share the same building, the same source of pencils and notebooks, I pulled you from the path of the 3:45 out of Surrey when the Spitalfield Gang threw you onto the tracks, I have given you nothing but the same level of attention as I give everyone else here! But as for you, Bradstreet--You've been kidnapping me every sodding year for five years, and henceforth, I should not be known as a stranger—to be blunt, my good fellow, _find yourself a new victim_!" A new rush of inspiration presented itself. "Get Watson."

"Watson!" Bradstreet repeated.

"Yes, _Watson_. I think you've seen him before…sturdy fellow, brown hair, brown eyes, hangs out with that madman of a private consulting detective—what was his name? Sherringford? No, Sherlock somebody, Sherlock Holmes, is it?"

"Tall, excitable chap?" Youghal popped up brightly. "Underfed looking? He lives on Cook Street, doesn't he?"

"_I know bloody well who Watson is_!" Bradstreet growled. "As if there'd be anyone else around Sherlock Holmes who wasn't paid to be!"3

"Why can't you use him?"

"My God, man, he's clearly got Edinburgh roots!"

"I fail to see the problem." Lestrade said honestly—and with a large helping of patience.

"Well, of course you wouldn't." Bradstreet snorted. "The Watsons from Edinburgh have to have Lallan in the stock."

"Be that as it may, _whatever_ a Lallan _is_, you have an uncertain chance of success with him, but you have no chance at all from me this year4." Lestrade glared. "Why don't you try some of that Calvinist Guilt you Scots are so skilled at?5 Remind him how much we at the Yard put up with having to just speak to his flatmate."

"I don't see how that could work." Bradstreet protested, but the way he shifted his feet suggested Lestrade's words were sinking in. Fresh victims were usually better and easier game than trying to run down and net wary former enslaved volunteers.

"Good Lord, don't you remember what happened on that case with the madman who was mailing severed badger heads to Lord Dauncy?6 I'll admit, verbally, Holmes' artistic skills have never been in a higher art than that, but as I recall, Dr. Watson was standing off to the side like he usually does, and cringing at every fifth word that came out of his mouth." Lestrade lifted his hands to implicate that everything was out of his hands. "Watson feels _guilt_, Bradstreet! Take advantage of it!"

Bradstreet gave in with amazingly bad grace. "If you see me coming back here tonight, you'll know I failed." He growled.

"I accept your challenge." Lestrade shot back. He was feeling far too smug for his own good.

Gregson waited until Bradstreet had stomped back out into the snow. "You're just doing this because of that contest." He pointed out. "It isn't like you to try to get back at someone using underhanded techniques."

"Well, I thought I'd give it a try first, see if I'm any good at it." Lestrade answered peacefully. "Did you happen to see Marcus? I need him to send a note."

"Over there." Gregson waved, caught the boy's eye from the other side of the room, and subsided against the wall. "What is it about Bradstreet that makes me dread the holiday?" He asked no one in particular.

"I don't know, but perhaps Scotland refers to the Twelve Days of Christmas as "The Daft Days" for a reason." Lestrade flagged the paper to be collected. That done, he went back to his reports, and the occasional thoughts of his wife. There was a lot of truth to the observation about Clea's confinement. He was torn between wanting the reason for the confinement over with, and the terror of facing fatherhood. If his memory (admittedly not to be trusted when factoring the high number of head-injuries in his life) was to be trusted, an infant in the house was a new and stressful change indeed. How his mother had dealt with so many…well, he was certain he _didn't_ know. But Clea had dealt with half a rugby-team of brute brothers, unwanted suitors, and a father who carried the wrestling championship title for three years running, so he could only _hope_ something that weighed about as much as a wheel of cheddar wouldn't pose too much of a challenge.

_Well, that's a nice theory_. Lestrade felt that now-familiar tightening sensation of fear/terror/optimism in his chest rise to the fore. God love that fool Bradstreet anyway. He meant well, but still…

Being that man's best friend was not easy. Acidic comments about Watson aside, Lestrade had to admit he felt a kinship with the man; it wasn't a simple thing to have as your best friend, a man who could pull you out of a warm bed at soul's midnight and send you trooping desperately across some misbegotten moor deliberately forgotten by God Himself during the last Age of Mammoths.

As far as best friends go, Lestrade's was merely obsessed. Watson's best friend was _insane_.

_I should feel guilty about drafting him for Hogmanay, _the little detective thought_. I really should. I suppose there's just no room in my cockles right now.__7_

At ten pm, Bradstreet returned with a strange expression in his face. He was also carrying a rugby shirt.

"He didn't give in?" Lestrade was horrified.

"Not in so many words, no. Turns out he's been drafted for the St. Bart's Hogmanay already." Bradstreet was in a strangely peaceful mood as he turned to go.

"Wait a moment…why are you so calm and _what are you carrying?_ Is that a rugger shirt?"8

"Dr. Watson apologized with a _most_ generous donation for the Hogmanay raffle." Bradstreet held up the shirt in question. "Did you know he used to play for Blackheath?" He smiled reverently—as well he might. "_I'll be seeing you later, old friend_." With that ominous farewell, he strolled away.

Lestrade felt his jaw fall open. "You mean, all this time, _I could have just bribed you to stay off my neck?_" He watched the too-smug Bradstreet walk back to his office, fielding admiring glances at his prize all the way.

"Blackheath, huh." Youghal commented around a toothpick. "That explains the way he tackled Lions down from that mad scissors-grinder."

"I don't believe this." Lestrade muttered. "Five years, I could have just donated a tin of pudding to get him to back off."

"You still have time." Youghal pointed out.

"No, I have another plan." Lestrade leaned back in his chair and with eerie calm, began stacking his paperwork for the end of the day. "I tipped Bradstreet off to my wife's youngest brother's. He'll do anything for a drink, and Bradstreet does give a good bowl of punch at the end of the Hogmany walk."

Youghal's eyeballs popped wide. "You're pulling one of your wife's own brothers, her _flesh and blood_, away from a _family night_? Are you mad as that scissors grinder?"

"Not at all. It's my youngest, most pestiferous in-law. Bartram Cheatham. Perhaps you've heard of him. Champion Lancashire wrestler? Clea's been demanding he do more charity work lately." Lestrade smiled.

"I get the notion he's your least favorite in-law, Geoffrey."

"Elementary deduction, Youghal."

Youghal chuckled under his breath.

"Something amusing, Youghal?"

"I was just thinking…too bad we don't have enough leverage to get Sherlock Holmes involved with Hogmanay."

"For the love of God, why would you think of that?"

"Simple." Youghal grinned. "He's dark-haired, and he's as strange as they come."

Notes:

1 L'estrade; estrade is a platform or stage. This is a wretchedly hard name to trace. A village of that name exists in central France.

Youghal: I know that Inspector Youghal only appeared once, and that in THE MAZARIN STONE, which is considered a real dud to some Doyle purists. As if even Holmes could EVER have a bad say…! Sorry. There was something I LIKED about that man.

1 As described by Doyle himself

2 As it has been pointed out among Holmes-scholars, there was a time when even decent boarding-houses in Great Britain would not put an actor up for the night. They had better luck in France, which really makes one wonder what Lestrade's family _was_ like.

3 I know this is strange, but I've combed months of analysis on the characters of SY Inspectors, and Lestrade is the ONLY one who seeks Holmes out for advice, even when he knows he's likely to get chewed out.

4 Lallan is slang for someone with Lowland, or southern roots. Ever hear of an Appalachian or Ozarker or even Dudley Dowright refer to a "flatlander?" You have a good idea what a Lallan is.

5 Spoken like a true lapsed Catholic who has formed his own religiosity.

6 The idiot ran out of hedgehogs, in case you're wondering.

7 Cockles of the heart.

8 **Rugby**. 1864, after Rugby, public school where the game was played, from city of Rugby in Warwickshire, central England. The place name is Rocheberie (1086) "fortified place of a man called _Hroca_;" with second element from O.E. burh (dat. byrig), replaced by 13c. with O.N. -by "village" due to the infl. of Dan. settlers. Otherwise it might be Rockbury today. First element perhaps rather O.E. hroc "rook." Rugby Union formed 1871. I didn't know at the time it was writ that 'rugger' didn't exist until 1893. Yowtch! But some fun facts: Scrum: Comes from scrimmage: scrimmage

c.1470, alteration of skirmish (q.v.). The verb is recorded from 1825. Meaning in rugby and U.S. football dates from 1857, originally "a confused struggle between players."


	5. Honey and Onions, Both

There was a proverb that Inspector Lestrade's tailor liked to employ on occasion (said occasions invariably having to do with being faced with the mixed blessing of another lucrative job because the Inspector had managed to ruin another masterpiece in th

There was a proverb that Inspector Lestrade's tailor liked to employ on occasion (said occasion invariably when faced with the mixed blessing of another lucrative job because the Inspector had ruined another masterpiece in the line of work). The proverb was a mash of syllables from his Middle-Eastern origins, but it translated roughly to "one day it's honey, the next, onions."

When he and Dr. Watson fell out of the carriage and only just barely managed to regain their footing at the steps of Scotland Yard, Lestrade decided this was one of Mr. Root's_"yawm 'asl wa yawm basl_" moments. Nothing else would encapsulate the sweetness of a successfully solved case marred at—

"Watson?!" Sherlock Holmes, standing at the top of said steps—_bad luck_—behind a large man in a very expensive looking suit of clothes—_oh, no, please don't let that be the Home Secretary's guest—worse luck_--and Baynes—_worser still_—and Gregson—_someone hand me my retirement pension right now, please, I'm ready to go._

On the other hand, it was possible Holmes didn't even notice he was there; he rarely did when Watson was around. Lestrade prayed for the status quo to remain just where it was.

"Good…good morning, Holmes." Slightly unsteady, Watson wavered just a bit as he waved and even managed a smile. Point to him. Lestrade gave himself up for dead and just allowed himself to collapse on the bottom step with his back against the newel-post. "Sorry I'm late; a few…a few things came up."

All things considered, it was not the **worst** thing he could have said, but certainly not the most imaginative.

"Are you all right, doctor?" Gregson openly stared.

"Oh, uh…I'm fine…we're both…fine…" Watson said a bit awkwardly. "Comparatively, that is…"

"You're covered in mud!" Gregson exclaimed. "Even you, Lestrade!" His horror was understandable; Lestrade had a reputation for being a dapper dresser; and he had worked hard to maintain that look. _All for naught now…_

"I beg your pardon, Baynes cleared his throat. "But that appears to be silt, not mud, Inspector." The smaller man pointed discreetly at the doctor's clothing. "Copious amounts of it, and I would venture to say it was off the Thames."

"Silt's a fine point," Gregson retorted. His face pinked slightly, as it did when he was pressed. "There's mud there too, and you can see it. And as for it being the Thames, there's not a thing wrong with my _nose_, Inspector."

"But the low tide just _passed_;" Baynes persisted and went straight to the point Lestrade had been praying against. "That's _high_-tide odour clinging to the gentlemen with such intimacy."

"Lestrade, did you fall into the Thames again?" Gregson smirked.

Lestrade shot him a look that was equal parts weariness and annoyance. He was actually rather pleased he had the strength for it. "For your information, no." He said with what gravity he could scrape up. "I did not 'fall in.'"

"He was pushed." Watson said helpfully. "The first time, anyway."

"So were you,' Lestrade pointed out unkindly. "And for your information, I did not fall into the Thames at any given time."

Up till this point, Holmes had adopted the slightly-superior air of a teacher observing two of his pet pupils in the classroom who were showing off to impress the master by discerning clues off the two bedraggled men at the bottom of the steps. He lost that demeanor rather quickly. "Watson, who pushed you into the Thames!"

"I have no idea," Watson said honestly. "But I'm not sure it really matters at this point, Holmes." The poor doctor leaned heavily on the newel-post, perilously close to Lestrade's sopping wet gloves, and took a deep breath. Lestrade thought about moving his hands, but at that moment, his reserves were plumbed.

There were few things that could filter through the overweening fog of the Thames. The wind changed, and with it, the reason for Watson's less than steady posture.

"Are you _drunk_, Watson?" Gregson asked in awe. "Lestrade, did you get him drunk?"

"No, I did _not_ get him drunk," Lestrade answered wearily. "It was only a flask of brandy. _Expensive_ brandy…"

"He was curing my sub-normal temperatures." Watson said blandly. "You may have noticed, the weather's a bit rancid t'day." He smiled suddenly, sweetly, as a thought struck him. "But it should clear up in a few hours, because my wounds aren't hurting…much."

"Marvelous, doctor. You owe me a fiver for my empty flask. That was the last of my Christmas stock."

Inevitably, Holmes took the reins. "I beg your pardon, Watson," he was walking down the steps, but stopped as his nose struck the brick wall of fumes coming off his friend. "Would you mind explaining yourself?"

Watson looked puzzled. "It's _perfectly_ clear, Holmes," he said in a slightly patronizing (if ever so slightly slurred) tone of voice. "We had to climb out of the Thames, and we d….d well got rid of Lestrade's flask to keep warm, because we had to wait for the slaughterhouse to close to get a ride back."

"Why did you have to wait for the slaughterhouse to close?" Gregson demanded.

Watson looked at him as if he was insane. "My good man, _look at us_!" He raised his arms and let them drop to his sides, almost overbalancing in the process. "The cab-drivers save the slaughterhouse workers for the last, because they're washing down the cabs at the end of the night!" He paused. "We actually were a bit floral in comparison."

"That's because the man sitting across from us was up to his elbows in thymus gland," Lestrade grumbled.

"Literally." Watson agreed. "He was smuggling them home for supper in his sleeves."

Baynes, who was fairly immune to the low qualities of life, openly gagged.

"And, no, Tobias, I _didn't_ have the heart to arrest him." Lestrade chimed in. "I would have had to confiscate all _twelve_ thymus glands he was planning to fry up for supper."

Holmes had found his tobacco and was packing his pipe, eyes slightly wide and round. "My good man, you are telling the story backwards. How is it you wound up in the Thames in the first place? Who pushed you into the Thames, Watson?"

"The same man who pushed Lestrade, Holmes." Watson seemed to think that explained everything. Perhaps it was the alcohol talking, or the injuries that only Lestrade knew about.

Holmes did not _quite_ clutch his skull, but Lestrade had that impression. "Watson," he said with remarkable calm, "Why is it you were pushed in the Thames at all?"

"Because of the…the…what _were_ those things again, Lestrade?"

"Canal dogs."

"Canal dogs." Watson said. "Something like an elkhound. Muscular little brutes, but very spry."

"Watson, why would canal dogs cause a man to push you into the Thames?"

"Well, I rather don't think he had a choice." Watson mused thoughtfully. "We'd exposed his dog-smuggling ring, and he was a little warm in his emotions at the thought of going to gaol and losing all that money."

"I think the money's what did it." Lestrade agreed.

"Watson…" Holmes' hand was actually starting to lift to his forehead before he stopped himself; Lestrade watched in fascination as a vein throbbed. "How is it you and Lestrade were caught up in a dog-smuggling business in the Thames?"

"More accident than anything else, Holmes." Watson sighed.

"'More accident?'" Lestrade yelped. "More like _pure_ accident!" He began twisting cloudy water out of the fibres of his scarf. "Complete and unadulterated, uncalculated, random happenstance accident!!" A pool of filthy water collected at his feet and sluggishly ran to the gutter. "If you hadn't been giving that sodding jackanape at the warf the resuscitation, we'd be at the Malmsy Keg by now, with fried black oysters and a pint of ale!"

"Well I could hardly leave him to die, Lestrade!" Watson protested reasonably (he thought).

"Oh, really?" Lestrade had moved from scarf to hat; he began batting his bowler back into shape and then ruined it all by jamming it under his arm. Cold wind whistled through his wet hair. "That's the difference between the two of us! Call me a bit on the Old-Testament slant of things, but when someone tries to kill _me_, I step back and reflect a mo' when said person needs a bit of assistance!"

"I'm a doctor, Lestrade. Doctors do things like that."

"Do you have burial insurance?" Lestrade wanted to know. "Because if the answer is no, I'm passing the Christmas Hat at the Yard for you. Assuming you live long enough to cash in on the benefit when you die."

"Wait a minute, is this the bloke who threw you into the Thames?" Gregson wasn't as strong as Holmes. He was holding on to his head with both hands. Baynes was just staring, and the big man behind Holmes was simply watching things with an impartial air of interest.

"No," Watson and Lestrade snapped at the same time.

"How could it be?" Watson was using that patronizing tone of voice again; it wore rather well on him. "A man doesn't up and re-start his heart and then just rise up and start swinging!"

"I beg your pardon," Baynes spoke again. "But why _were_ you having to resuscitate a person in the first place, Doctor Watson?"

"Because Inspector Lestrade lost his temper." Watson jerked his thumb at Lestrade without rancor at the detective. "He struck the man in the sternum with a flying kick and it was hard enough to stop his heart."

"Well if he'd finished what he'd started, _your_ heart would have stopped first!" Lestrade retorted. "And I can control my kicks, thank you—it wasn't my bloody fault the idiot stepped _in_ to the kick in the first place because he couldn't wait to fill you with holes!"

"I'm not saying you did the wrong thing, Lestrade." Watson said patiently. "But that is how it happened."

"And this person, who Watson saved, was trying to, uh, shoot him with multiple intents _because_?" Gregson picked up the inquiry.

"Offhand, because of his wife." Lestrade couldn't resist. He _tried_ to be a good man, but he wasn't made of stone. "You know how some men get when they see their women in the company of other men…"

"Oh, stuff it, Lestrade," Watson barked as three detectives gaped. "The woman was a _patient_—a patient thanks to her brute of a husband!" He jerked his thumb again at Lestrade. "He beat her half to death, and I managed to persuade her to take a statement against him, and Lestrade was taking the statement."

"And then he staggered out of the fishing-shack to see _you_ wrapping her up in that blanket, and he rushed you." Lestrade snipped. "I swear, I've _never_ heard language like that, and I've patrolled East of Aldgate during the full moon at cat-eye shift!"

"Hold it," Gregson had both hands in the air. "The patient's husband thought the worst, and he ran at you, doctor, planning to fill you with holes, and Lestrade kicked him and inadvertently caused his heart to stop, and then you were re-starting his heart? Is that what happened?"

There was a brief pause.

"Mostly…" Lestrade said slowly. Watson nodded his agreement.

"That's all the important details." The doctor said.

"But…that still doesn't explain how you both wound up in the drink!" Gregson protested.

"At high tide." Baynes added. "And it's now low-tide."

"Because," Watson sighed for patience. "My patient's _lover_ unfortunately chose _that_ moment to show up."

_The reaction really was almost worth being frozen in filthy water_, Lestrade thought to himself. Almost. A cup of hot tea and brandy by the fireplace would help a great deal.

"It isn't as terrible as it sounds, gentlemen," Lestrade felt obligated to say. "He took a rush at the patient's husband, and, well, he sort of _missed_ in his eagerness. Watson went into the drink, and he went for me, but he tripped over Watson's patient—I mean, his patient who was the patient's _husband_—and I went into the drink too."

"That was an excellent uppercut you gave him, by the way." Watson pointed out.

"Thank you."

"So what happened to the patient—I mean, the patient's husband, and the patient's lover who was attacking you?"

"Wellll, they went into the drink tooooo." Lestrade said very slowly.

"_Both_ of them? How did that happen?" Gregson was not ashamed for staring.

"Er, that's not important." Watson said in the most unconvincing of tones. "Is it, Inspector?"

"Certainly not." Lestrade said firmly. He shook his head, felt a disgusting sensation, and tilted his head to the side in order to bang water out of his ears the better. "Oh, good god," he muttered faintly. "I'm going to wind up in the hospital, I just know it."

Holmes had, in the meantime, found the absolute line between what his nose could tolerate and proximity to Watson. He was studying both men with a strange blend of expressions on his face. "Then what happened after both of you fell into the Thames, my good fellow?"

Watson needed to think about it for a moment. "Well, it got a bit muddled for a bit, Holmes," he began carefully. "I'm afraid I can't be completely pertinent with all the details."

"Just…do go on, Watson. Do go on." Holmes was puffing furiously on his pipe. Perhaps it masked the smell coming off Watson.

"Right…well…we thrashed about for a bit, and a cabin nearly ran us over a few times, which I thought was perfectly redundant as they were also trying to shoot us, but we managed to straighten all that out when Lestrade explained we had nothing to do with my patient's husband or her lover…"

"Explain nothing," Lestrade snapped. "You forgot to mention the captain of that bloody cabin was your patient's _brother_! Wouldn't that make a bit more sense in your recollection??"

"If you want to be wholly pertinent," Watson shot back, "you could mention my patient's father's role in all of this too."

"The (curse word) I will!" Lestrade exclaimed. "This is unbelievable enough!"

"It's still the _truth_," Watson riposted. A fresh wave of what had been triple-distilled French plum brandy emanated outward.

"Watson, do you have _any_ idea what this is going to sound like in front of a jury?" Lestrade was dying to know. "All right, we'll discount your patient's father--for now. The bottom-fact is, we were _trying_ to stay afloat without getting driven under the Thames by the cabin, and once the fool stopped trying to steer over us, we had managed to get to the bank when the (explicative deleted) suffragists started throwing their bloody cricket bats at us—" Lestrade gulped for air.

_First, second, and third mistake: Never, ever stop for air, because it will give Sherlock Holmes an opening, by which he will inject himself into the conversation and wage a hostile takeover._

"Suffragists!" Holmes repeated. In another world, Lestrade would have been a bit flattered to have the Great Detective hanging off his every word. "Lestrade, you and Watson completely missed the part about the suffragists!"

"We didn't _miss_ that part, Holmes, for heaven's sake!" Watson protested; his reporting abilities were under question. "They didn't show up until _that_ moment! Give us a bit of credit!"

Holmes came as close to speechless as Lestrade had ever seen. What a pity he wasn't completely sober to fully canonize the memory. "Watson, accept my apologies." He said in a remarkably even voice. "Please continue. Suffragists were throwing cricket bats at you?"

"It was a full-frontal attack!" Lestrade exclaimed. "There were no less than thirty of them, with three bats each!"

"Well, I'm not certain we should _count_ that as an attack, Inspector." Watson said thoughtfully. "After all, they thought we were my patient's husband and lover—it seems he's just as violent as the husband, and the ladies were banding together to rescue one of their own—"

"That's when _**I**_ started to greatly worry about our survival, there, but did you have one bloody soot-tag worth of self-survival instinct? Good _God_, no, you were all determined to _try to make peace with them!"_ Lestrade was shouting now, with what every Constable in A Division called "The Doom Finger" leveled on the tipsy doctor. "Make peace with violent suffragists! Are you _bloody out of your sand-baked mind, Watson_?! You can't take a large portion of London's population, which has been subjugated and abused for generations, allow them a bit of physical power, and _not_ expect it to go to their heads! It takes _years_ to iron out those tendencies! _In the meantime, you stay far away!"_

"Lestrade, honestly, if they'd only known we were there to help the woman…"

"Did you see them ever once stop to ask for our identification and purpose for being there?!" Lestrade roared. "Of course not! They were too busy trying to knock the eyeballs out of your sockets!" Lestrade chose that moment to yank the glove off his left hand and hold it up for inspection: The knuckles were burst and bleeding. "Does _this_ look like an example of the gentler sex, Doctor?!"

Watson sighed, and turned back to the breathless audience. "_That_ was when we opted for the better part of valour and jumped back into the Thames."

"It was much safer," Lestrade vouchsafed. "Floating bacterial mats and all…Because the son had been knocked unconscious by a flying cricket-bat, and his _father_ was now at the helm, and I don't think he could see his own drunken hand in front of his face!"

Watson paused. "You noticed all that? I'm impressed."

"I don't exactly pause to write it all down when it's happening, thank you, but I do try to pay attention!"

"Well, at any rate, that was about the most exciting part about our day." Watson abruptly sank down as if someone had cut the strings out of his legs. "We had to let the current take us downstream out of the range of fire, and then it was a matter of keeping warm until the slaughterhouse closed." He paused to yawn. "Anything else?"

"For myself? I'm wondering how you're going to write all this up, Watson." Holmes spoke in a strange tone indeed.

"Dashed if I know. Lestrade lost his notebook when he threw it at the suffragist riding point." Watson yawned again.

"I wouldn't worry about it. No one's going to believe _this_ mess anyway." Lestrade was being quite reasonable.

"Very true."

"Hold up, just a moment, if you please," The Surreyman had a singular thought. "You didn't explain a few salient points to this story." Baynes observed. "You said you didn't know the identity of the person who pushed you into the Thames, and you didn't explain the part about the dogs."

"Ahem." Watson cleared his throat. "You know," he began carefully, "I really don't feel like discussing that at this particular moment. Do you, Lestrade?"

"No." Lestrade had his head in his hands. "I'd much rather talk about my missing iron, my missing club, my missing bloody whistle, my missing badge. I'll even talk about your missing medical bag before I'm up to talking about sodding canal dogs and common-law husbands of a uniquely illiterate bend."

"Er, I see…" Gregson cleared his throat. "You know, though, I'm looking forward to the report tomorrow, Lestrade."

"I'll keep that in mind, Euclid." Lestrade deliberately used Gregson's nickname in the presence of the strange man. "Now if anyone has no objections, I'm going to go inside and file a few reports before incipient pneumonia sets in with a rampaging case of otis media." He rose to his feet, wavering slightly, and plodded his way up the steps, one foot placed before the other.

Holmes watched him go; small wonder, everyone else was watching too. Watson had his eyes closed and was dozing his exhaustion against the rails.

A large hand tapped his shoulder. "Sherlock," the big man said.

"Yes, brother?"

"I believe I've found my liaison."

Holmes was horrified. Temporarily. Mycroft had been wrong perhaps _twice_ in his entire life, and one of those times had yet to be borne out. It was not his place to question the depths of genius. "Are you certain?" He hissed under his breath. "You met Gregson and Baynes; they're _much_ smarter."

"Compared to whom?" Mycroft Holmes wanted to know without any false pride. "I need someone who has the emotional capacity to withstand adversity. Are you saying facing ninety flying cricket-bats by disgruntled suffragists doesn't qualify a man?"

Holmes sighed. "I'll leave it to you to speak with him," he said at last. He knew he was washing his hands of the affair, but honestly, if Mycroft needed a go-between for the sundry affairs between the Yard and the Home Office, he could manage it himself.


	6. The Art of Reports, Part 1

_Thanks to the number of private posts combined with a spell of rampaging insomnia, here are the TRUE events of what happened with Watson and Lestrade..._

Mycroft Holmes disliked _anything_ that pulled him out of his nice, neat lines of behavior. Had he known that his post with the government had required him to commence _some_ sort of initiative more than thrice-yearly, he would have refused the 450l position.

On the other hand, it _did_ give him the occasional piquancy such as the hastily-assembled report in his hands. Few things were capable of surprising the large man, but proof of conspiracy using ethnic patriotism was certainly up in that exclusive category. To be honest, this was one of the more entertaining reports he'd read in years. In the privacy of his office, he chuckled a few times, aware that his amusement translated terribly.

The third time he was relishing the report, the expected knock on the door occurred.

"Enter, Sherlock."

His little brother entered, one eyebrow already skyward. "Brother mine, you take for granted that your intruder is family."

"Granted, nothing." Mycroft had never risen to his precocious brother's bait; he was not about to now. "Your step is most distinctive, Sherlock. It reminds me of your handwriting; uneven and heedless."

Sherlock looked slightly insulted, which Mycroft had expected. As older brother, he knew Sherlock was never completely comfortable with being 'second best' in matters of intelligence. Nature had _more_ than compensated for that with his boundless energy and willingness to seek out his thoughts on a physical level; Mycroft never quite fathomed why Sherlock would feel inadequate in comparison when he was quite gifted in matters _he_ was notoriously deficient in.

_Perhaps because he knows when in the field of talents we share, he is not as swift._ It was an old preponderance, one Mycroft wished Sherlock could reconcile himself too, and yet Mycroft was actually powerless to remove that inadequacy. It was common enough for the younger brother to be compared to the older; but in cases of a genius born after another genius, the results were nothing less than brutal. If only their parents had had the sense to see that.

But they had not been in particular possessions of genius, and so they never did, and Sherlock would spend the rest of his life measuring himself up to standards set out by the dead.

"You are early, Sherlock." Mycroft changed the subject; he settled the report under its glass paperweight and made a weaving of his fat fingers. "Did you have another agenda?"

"Not so much, brother mine." Sherlock responded slowly. "To begin with, Dr. Watson will not accompany me today."

"I gathered as much, as you did not bring him." Mycroft realized that was slightly unctuous; he stroked his chins and permitted the emotion of puzzlement to seek forth. "Some social engagement, perhaps? Or duty? I had looked forward to meeting him."

Sherlock relaxed slightly, as he always did when he knew a bit more than his brother. It was a game Mycroft played that hurt no one. Sherlock admired him, but consistently set himself up for failure by comparison. "I would say duty, Mycroft. He was called in as locum to some wretched case off the Stepney, and will not return until it is concluded. We must wait for another time for your first meeting."

"All things come to those who wait, Sherlock." Mycroft checked his watch without needing to. "Shall we depart?"

"By all means." Sherlock looked oddly worried for a moment. "But I confess I do not understand your insistence for this endeavor. Do you not already have an agent within the halls of Scotland Yard?"

"As you have already induced that answer, I needn't answer." Mycroft permitted a smile to the smaller man. "But that agent is groomed for a separate purpose, and their work is exclusive. I will not ask much of your time, brother; merely be present as I meet the examples of British Law."

"Very well, then." Sherlock remained dubious for the record. "It is a bad lot, brother."

"That is a rather subjective term, Sherlock. If you feel my judgment is in error, I trust you to let me know."

Sherlock sighed slightly. "Ignorance and stupidity is as bad as corruption and greed." He said firmly. "There are a few who possess some capacity for your goal. I will not say they can fulfill them."

"Then I await our work today." Mycroft pulled his coat on slowly, resenting the departure of his warm office. He had no anger to Sherlock's rude and insulting assessment of Scotland Yard. A man who has no forgiveness of himself carries little for others. Frankly, it was a mark of the Yard's nobility that they seemed to recognize that. As his older brother, Mycroft could appreciate the superior quality of tolerance.

-

**Lestrade's Report:**

_**Inspector **__**(A Division)**__**.**__**G. Lestrade**__**, **__**reports that at **__**7:15**__**(time), **__**March 14**__**, 1886**__** (date) int, while on duty was requested to take the testimony of **__**Mrs. Patricia Kroger**__**, (name) fishmonger, (occupation) for assault against her person by her common-law husband, **__**Paul Webster**__** (name). Said husband struck Mrs. Kroger repeatedly with his fists, causing extensive bruising on her face, neck, shoulders, abdomen and left hip. One kick left a bruise at the top of right thigh. Mrs. Kroger is willing to testify against her attacker in court, as her attending medical authority, Dr. John H. Watson of 221 B Baker Street ( locum tenum for Dr. Cornelius Springfield, Stepney Charity Practice)… **_

"Oh, eel be sorey, yew chust zee. Ai gots connegshuns, lykeyaznawt."

Dr. Watson's grim face flickered with genuine bewilderment, and as he rose to his feet, he flashed a look over the woman's head to Inspector Lestrade. The little man nodded and together they stepped aside to a discreet point against the slow lap of the river, letting the battered woman gather warmth inside the shelter of tightly-woven blankets.

"She just said, 'oh, he'll be sorry, you just see.'" Lestrade translated. "'I've got connexions, like as not.'"

"I am _impressed_." Watson admitted. "I'm never completely certain as to what she's saying…What kind of accent _is_ that? I've been trying to fathom it since November!"

"Off the top of my head?" Lestrade lifted his dark eyebrows. "I call it the "missing tooth accent. Also, she talks as though the adults who raised her had fossy-jaw1. You catch on after a while." He tilted his head to one side; there was something about his personality that refused to lie completely idle, and combined with his peculiar boundless energy, gave the impression he was only partially bound to the earth. After three years of knowing him, Watson was used to it, but he suspected it was that slight atypical manner that wrangled confessions out of people; it unnerved the average man. It also irritated Holmes to no end, who seemed to feel all that energy should be going to Lestrade's brain in solving cases—as if bodily and mental energy could be diverted as easily as a plumbing job.

The doctor shook his head; he was as mysterious in his own way as his fellow lodger; Scotland Yard had seen many a unique specimen in their lives, but Watson was a soupcon of chivalry, silence, linguistic expression, patience, innocence, hardness and compassion. Being locum for the only doctor in England who was willing to take on the charity cases up the Thames was a case in point. The last locum had taken the job because they needed fresh corpses for their research in the collection of buoyant tissue gases.

"I'm rather surprised to find you here today, doctor," Lestrade admitted. "I thought you'd be with Mr. Holmes for sure."

Watson made a face. "I rather failed to see the glamour in joining Holmes on a tour of Scotland Yard with the…whoever that guest from the Home Office was…or was it Foreign Office?"

Lestrade made a tsking sound. "If it was the Foreign Office, you should have gone," he admonished with a grin. Despite the induction of some democracy, the fact was, only those of royal or supremely privileged connections were allowed even the smallest post in the Foreign Office. For that reason, they were the most pampered and fawned-over section of the government.

"I'm from Edinburgh, Lestrade, I'm already foreign!" The two men laughed, but softly in deference to the woman sitting off to the side by the (illegal) open fire inside a small pit made of broken clay roofing-tiles and chunks of ballast that had once been part of a Roman Road. "For that matter, why didn't _you_ stay in Scotland Yard today, and catch a bit of the glory?"

Lestrade just looked at him. "No, thank you. My caseload is quite enough as it is. When someone important notices you, it always boils down to more work."

Watson sighed. "I agree. _This_ is work enough."

"What a shame," Lestrade flipped over his notebook, peering thoughtfully at the pages of shorthand he had collected. "I'm willing to bet this is a typical common-law marriage off the river, Dr. Watson. If the husband—assuming we can find him—wants to make a royal ferment of the thing, he can protest he wasn't married to her in the first place, and that'll neatly distract the deciding authorities in the old 'chicken or egg first' bit."

"But why would he want to say he isn't married to the woman he attacked?" Watson wanted to know. Warm cognac-brown eyes flickered in bewilderment. "A woman can't testify against her husband; wouldn't he want to say they were married to counteract her testimony?" He pointed to the notebook in question.

Lestrade pondered that the big man before him had survived the worst war in British living memory thanks to a combination of tenacity and luck; yet he was _still_ unversed at the true disgusting ways of his fellow man. _No wonder Holmes keeps him _around. He's a daily injection of sanity. "If they're not married, he can protest she attacked him first," he pointed out. "And then you're going to see a carnivale proceeding."

Watson couldn't help himself; he looked backwards to the woman inside her blankets. "Inspector," he spoke as gently as he could, "The woman's no bigger than a caddis. If he says she attacked him first, surely it won't hold up in court."

"Sometimes it does." Lestrade admitted. He couldn't help a chuckle. "Small" meant "victim" to so many people…even intelligent men like the chivalrous Watson.

"I've treated this woman off and on for half a year," Watson cleared his throat. "The injuries were getting worse; this is as bad as I've ever seen them. If he'd struck three inches higher, she'd be dead of her spleen now."

"Assault's a serious charge, I assure you." Lestrade said soberly. "Now if we could even find her husband—do you know if this is his actual name?"

Watson sighed and suddenly looked quite weary. "I didn't even _know_ his name until this moment. She's ever referred to him as a string of increasingly vituperative euphemisms."

"Larruping." Lestrade began. "Well, let's finish this up so we can see her off to a warm bed and a hot meal."

"And I believe I owe you a hot meal myself," Watson confessed. "Why is it whenever I'm trying to find a policemen, you're never far behind?"

"I tend to spend as little time in my office as possible, that's why." Lestrade said ruefully. "You realize, statistically you have to encounter me with _some_ degree of frequency."

"In a city of four million?"

"Dr. Watson, this isn't like it was forty years ago, when there was _one_ policeman per 900 citizens of London—we have a bit of a bigger staff now, but it's all broken into Divisions. Your career simply takes you within or adjacent to my particular beat."

"I wouldn't think Stepney would be part of Whitehall." Watson protested.

"And it isn't." Lestrade countered. "But as far as policemen go, any port in a storm, correct? K Division is supposed to be caught up in a bit of a mess by the Old Bridge today…some sort of partial collision. Ergo, Stepney's spread thin and we're all keeping an eye out to help out."

"Your dedication to your duty has earned you dinner, Inspector." They began walking back as one. "But…Inspector…"

"Yes?"

"What exactly defines a _partial_ collision?"

"I have no idea. I wasn't in the Marine Police Force long enough to catch on to all the jargon…"

Mrs. Kroger watched their return. In the watery London light her bruises were settling into one even mass of violet. Eyes bright and blue looked up at them without the slightest bit of pity; there was even a bit of triumph in them—something that always created a sinking sensation in the Inspector's chest. Victims didn't look _smug_ without a reason, and there were an infinite number of missing corpses in London to prove it.

"One last thing, Mrs…ah…" Lestrade made a show of looking at his notebook. "Mrs. Kroger?"

"Yes, I'm Mrs. Kroger." Mrs. Kroger supplied proudly.

"Forgive my puzzlement, but wouldn't your husband be Mr. Kroger, then?"

"Good Lord, no. I've always been a Kroger." She looked amazed at his rank stupidity. "My folks are Krogers, always have been Krogers. _Mrs_. Means I'm married, you know!"

"Oh." Long, _long_ practice kept Lestrade even in composure. "Well, Mrs. Kroger, what again, is the name of your husband?"

"Paul Webster."

"Is Mr. Webster nearby, Mr. Kroger?" Lestrade was thinking of the paperwork-bogles who would be wallowing in this one.

"Oh, he's _around_..." Mrs. Kroger's response was slow and somewhat shifty. Her eyes slid to the side, then to the other side. Lestrade's chest crimped inward.

"Mrs. Kroger, I do hope you didn't choose those words because he's…dispersed in simultaneous multiple locations."

She blinked up at him. "I wouldn't do anything violent," she protested as Watson shifted uneasily in his stance. "I got my connexions, I do."

"Connections, Mrs. Kroger?" Lestrade turned that over slowly. "Do you mean _family_, Mrs. Kroger?"

"Well, that too." She answered with the serene attitude of a person viewing a problem that is no longer hers. Lestrade's uneasy feeling was multiplying like a den of rabbits. 'Family' could mean either blood-kin, or a group of organized criminals.

"Who do you mean besides family, Mrs. Kroger?" He knew that sounded less professional and more desperate, but at this point, he was imagining a slaughtered man, carefully scattered across parts of London if not in sausage or feeding the fish in the bottom of the Thames.

"Oh, I have friends." Mrs. Kroger said calmly.

"Mrs. Kroger," Watson said slowly, "Who exactly are your friends?"

"The Daughters of the Iceni Revolution." Mrs. Kroger seemed to think they would be flattered to know her by association. The men could practically hear the "you may bow before me" in her voice.

"Iceni…why does that sound familiar?" Lestrade recalled a dusty memory in his tired braid, almost buried in the humdrum of everyday, but couldn't quite pull it out.

"Good heavens, Mrs. Kroger, you're shivering." Watson's medical pride rose to the fore. He went to the split barrel that was his makeshift field-table and found a second wrapper. "I'm sorry. I didn't think about this weather…"

Lestrade postponed what would soon be a very important thought as he waited politely for the doctor to perform his duties. Just as he was noting that their once-bustling and busy portion of the riverfront had suddenly emptied of humans, a blurry figure lurched with uneven gracelessness out of a ramshackle Cockney shelter withed-up between two crumbling buildings. Lestrade was just thinking the man was large enough to give his bully-great brothers in law a start when the man's eyes chose that moment to focus on Dr. Watson with his hands on Mrs. Kroger's shoulders.

"Hoi!" The voice could have blasted the soot right out of the clouds and spun black rain for a week. "That's my wife you (_garbling mass of words Lestrade had never encountered before in such context_). "You keep your (_garble_) hands off (_garble_) so help me I (_unintelligible yet wholly understandable_)!"

Watson had stepped to the side, but naturally, the gallant idiot wasn't about to leave a woman in distress, nor let a policeman do his job to protect the civilians. "Now see here, sir!" He protested loudly, his hands in the air to show he was no harm. "I would advise you to stop for a moment and reflect—"

As soon as Mr. Webster reached into his coat-pocket, Lestrade knew it was all over. _I'm getting soft,_ he thought, knowing he should have been paranoid enough to have pulled out his own iron as soon as he slapped eyes on the Man Mountain. Luckily for him, the man was more busy with rushing the doctor; perhaps he wanted to club Watson with the gun a few times before he shot him? The little detective heard the click of metal.

_Thank God for unprofessional thugs,_ Lestrade's private mantra and daily-to-nightly prayer sounded as he stepped inside Webster's line of advance and twisted on his good right foot. "Mr. Webster, I arrest you for assaultGodsavetheQueen—"His left foot might have that blooming inturn, but it was good enough for kicking.

Watson had seen Lestrade fight on _rare_ occasions (Lestrade had the spirit of a prizefighter but had to be _given_ someone to fight first). It was always an impressive sight as most people simply couldn't believe they were being waylaid by someone half their size. The doctor flinched at the sound of impact. The little man used his lack of size to great effect and precision in his blows. Webster stopped as if a brick wall had landed on him, and his eyes grew wide. He lost his momentum and stood in utter silence for a moment as Lestrade returned to his stance, hands up in boxing stance to protect his face and ready for the next blow.

The next blow would have been superfluous. Webster folded up, one section at a time, on the stinking surface of the riverwalk. Saliva ran out of his mouth.

"Blimey," Mrs. Kroger admired. "That was bluudy marvelous."

"Is this your husband, Mrs. Kroger?"

"It's Mr. Webster." (later, much later, Lestrade would regret that particular choice of phrase)

"May have to have you testify that in court." Lestrade took a deep breath.

"Good heavens," Watson rose and was kneeling at the prone behemoth. "Lestrade, was it necessary to strike him in the sternum?"

"I wouldn't have hit him there if he hadn't insisted on moving," Lestrade snapped. He lowered his hands. "I know that's not a place to strike!" And how very true. It could easily stop a man's heart with such an impact…

Like now.

"You killed him!" Mrs. Kroger exclaimed. "My word, that's what I call performing in service to the Queen!" She smiled despite the pain of her bruises at the shocked little detective and stood, extending her hand like a man would in a rough fisherwoman's handshake. "So considerate of you! You just saved me a world of trouble! I must say, I know the Coppers have improved their lot these past few years, but that's just plain thoughtful!"

"Er, Lestrade, hand me my bag…" Watson's harassed voice was not a good indication of things to come. Lestrade fairly leaped to the barrel that was Watson's makeshift field-table and wrenched the fifteen-pound marvel of luggage to the doctor's side. He watched as Watson filled a chamber with something and ripped open the man's shirt.

Mrs. Kroger hadn't noticed. "You coppers aren't allowed presents are you?" She wondered; he shook his head no, violently. ""Well, that's a shame. Seems like proper thanks should be given." Abruptly, her green eyes glittered as she swept him up and down, and Lestrade had no doubts as to what kind of thanks she was considering.

**The Official story, As It Went Several Hours Later:**

"_Hold it," Gregson had both hands in the air. "The patient's husband thought the worst, and he ran at you, doctor, planning to fill you with holes, and Lestrade kicked him and inadvertently caused his heart to stop, and then you were re-starting his heart? Is that what happened?"_

_There was a brief pause._

"_Mostly…" Lestrade said slowly. Watson nodded his agreement._

"_That's all the __important__ details." The doctor said. Unspoken but loud between doctor and Yarder was the consequence of _some_ particular details getting out. Especially to Mrs. Lestrade, who might yet fulfill her family's habit of letting their tempers give way to temporary government-paid self-improvement vacations behind bars._

"_But…that still doesn't explain how you both wound up in the drink!" Gregson protested._

"_At high tide." Baynes added. "And it's now low-tide."_

"_Because," Watson sighed for patience. "My patient's _lover_ unfortunately chose that moment to show up."_

1 Hazard in making matches; phosphorous caused a deterioration of the jawbone, made it almost melt. Workers didn't complain at the loss of their jawbones, but the safer standards that reduced that also cut their pay.


	7. The Art of Reports, Part 2

**What Really Happened:**

"I think he's going to live!"

"Thank goodness." Lestrade said before thinking. Mrs. Kroger flashed him a look that was every bit as dangerous as the calf-eyes she'd just been giving him—only they were dangerous in a different way. "Less paperwork," Lestrade stammered—Good heavens, he _still_ wasn't thinking. "He'll be wishing he were dead at the end of this day, Mrs. Kroger, I assure you."

Oddly enough, she seemed to accept that. "Well, I understand you wouldn't want to do any more writing than you needed." She said generously. "Bein' it's hard to be any good at it." The almost-widow pointed to the detective's still-open notebook, which was covered with his shorthand account. After intensive training, shorthand made sense. Without it, it looked like a small child had been trying to draw with live earthworms. "You know, the public schools now charge no more'n five-pence for a week o'teaching. You should think about taking a few classes."

"I'll…er, keep that in mind, Mrs. Kroger…" Lestrade swallowed dryly. "Thank you."

"There we are!" Watson breathed out, as did his patient. Flat on his back, saliva running down his face, his colour slowly bleeding back into his tissues and wild brown hair tumbled over the wet earth, the man didn't look frightening any more, just…very large.

"You Gammy dodger!"

Mrs. Kroger whirled, her blanket sweeping behind her. "Roddy!" She exclaimed in delight. A man stalked forward from a narrow snicket between buildings off the larger street. He was (thankfully) not as large as Webster, but there was a look to him Lestrade _did not like at all_—it was the look of a certain Roderick P. McAlpin, seasoned Newgate Garroter who had as many suspected murders to his name as he had verified ability in wiggling out of charges. Even Holmes couldn't find anything on the slimy—he was stampeding forward.

"You philanderin' midge!" Roddy was shouting. "I leave for a bleedin' cigar and I find your hands all over three men!" Watson was closer; square hands with long fingers telescoped forward; a length of piano wire stretched between, aiming for the doctor's throat.

_**The Official Story:**_

"_It isn't as terrible as it sounds, gentlemen," Lestrade felt obligated to say. "He took a rush at the patient's husband, and, well, he sort of missed in his eagerness. Watson went into the drink, and he went for me, but he tripped over Watson's patient—I mean, his patient who was the patient's husband—and I went into the drink too."_

"_That was an excellent uppercut you gave him, by the way." Watson pointed out._

"_Thank you."_

**What Really Happened:**

Watson yelped as Roddy tripped over the prone body of Mr. Webster. Mrs. Kroger, in the meantime, had opted to seek protection from the policeman in the lot; Lestrade found his hands full of her as she fell against him. As horrific as this was getting, his mind noted that his wife would kill Mrs. Kroger for getting the smell of badly-cured kippers on the coat she'd bought him for Boxing Day. Clea Lestrade had more prohibitions, bans and rules on the coat than the Irish tragic hero had _gaesa_. He barely had the courage to walk out the door with it.

"Doctor!" Lestrade thrust Mrs. Kroger away with relief as Roddy threw Watson into the river. The man spun, his cube-like face warping with the delight of one down, and one more to go.

"Mr. McAlpin, you are interfering with the due process of law and the person of a Scotland Yard Inspector!" Lestrade bellowed; he was good at that. "I'll thank you to—" His fist connected with Roddy's chin once, then twice. Roddy blinked and took a step backwards.

-

"_Watson_!"

If he wasn't hanging on to the stilted bank for dear life, he would have been astonished to hear the precise, careful Inspector call his name _without_ the title. _That is completely out of character_, the doctor thought—as if what he was doing was any less so. Somehow, one knew without a trace of doubt that were he on his deathbed, Lestrade would _still_ refer to Holmes as "_Mr_. Holmes."

Watson sputtered slightly, wincing at the grit of the Thames between his teeth. Just the possibility of what he might be swimming in at low tide was enough to give him a grotesque case of phantasies. "He—"He choked as water splashed against his throat. "-ere!" He strangled out. Just to be on the safe side, he clenched his stomach and threw up what he'd just swallowed. The side of a floating algal mat, complete with humming insects and part of a green sausage made it easy.

"Hold on!" Lestrade's voice sounded far away; Watson couldn't see a blessed thing above the steep bank—why was it, he wondered frantically, the Royal Engineers decided the solution to _everything_ was a nice steep trapezoid?

"Stop!" Lestrade was shouting. "Stop right there, sir! You are under arrest—"

Watson felt a cobble give slightly under his fingers and held on for dear life. The current tugged at him, thankfully with nowhere near the force of the High Tide. A gun went off, still invisible but nearby. A woman screamed as Watson's heart froze. Was that Mrs. Kroger?

"_Mrs. Kroger!"_ Watson shouted. _"Are you there?"_

A second gun-shot. Watson was trying to lift himself out of the water, but the river had soaked his winter clothing to the extent that he now weighed twice his normal lot; with his bad shoulder he simply couldn't pull the weight up. He needed help.

So did Lestrade, if the sounds were any clue.

And then, Lestrade's bedraggled features popped over the edge. He was missing his bowler and his hair was far from the proper sleeked-back appearance the Yard preferred to see, but he was alive and obviously relieved to see Watson. "Thank God!" He breathed. "Doctor! I was afraid you were drowned!"

"Not yet, but I'll be glad to get out!" Watson struggled to lift his good arm. "Help me, please…my shoulder…"

Lestrade blanched with that _I-forgot-he's-crippled_ look Watson knew so well. Watson could recognize that expression in his sleep. "I beg your pardon, doctor," the detective threw himself flat on his front and reached with both arms. Watson gripped tightly and breathed. Then a strange sound rattled behind Lestrade. Watson saw the little man glance behind his shoulder, and then whip his head back around, a look of panic in his dark eyes. "Watson, hurry?" He gritted. "We don't have much time—"

Correction: _any_ time. A loudly swearing Roddy, handcuffed to a groggy but just as reluctant Mr. Webster by grace of Lestrade's Derbies, lurched on the horizon.

Watson was, at heart, an optimist when it came to women. It went against his grain to fathom a woman not being intelligent, or at least sensible enough that she wouldn't pay court to men who were too stupid to _not_ fight each other while under arrest at the very edge of a riverbank. Truth could be brutal.

Roddy was much smaller than Webster, but Webster was just so…blooming _large_ that Roddy's fists and kicks and blows made no more sense than a terrier attacking the stone lion off the library steps. If anything, Webster was paying too much attention to swearing at his wife's lover to even notice he was being assailed. Language scorched Watson's water-logged ears.

"Ooof!"

One moment, Lestrade was pulling Watson up with all his might. The next, a large boot accidentally stepped on the detective while kicking him in an attempt to keep his balance. Watson was never certain on the logistics of the maneuver later, but somehow, all four of them were now in the Thames.

_**The Official Report:**_

"_So what happened to the patient—I mean, the patient's husband, and the patient's lover who was attacking you?"_

"_Wellll, they went into the drink tooooo." Lestrade said very slowly._

"_Both of them? How did that happen?" Gregson was not ashamed for staring._

"_Er, that's not important." Watson said in the most unconvincing of tones. "Is it, Inspector?"_

"_Certainly not." Lestrade said firmly. _

**What Really Happened:**

"Where'd they go?!" Watson peered in the water but the handcuffed hooligans were nowhere to be seen through his water-logged eyes. Grit settled behind his eyelids, rendering him all but blind.

"Down there!" Lestrade pointed with the hand that wasn't helping hold Watson afloat. Watson was both impressed at the little man's strength and guilty for making him do such a thing, but if Webster's copper-toed boot had been enough to knock Lestrade in, they had also been enough to knock the doctor half-silly with a head-blow. Hot blood trickled down the back of Watson's neck, and he privately mourned the scolding Mrs. Hudson would give him tonight. She abhorred bloodstains and the laundress always charged extra. "I think they're…" Lestrade locked his hand into a crumbled and probably illegal mooring-ring that must have dated back to the _last_ ruling female monarch. "They're up by the docks. I think—_oh, for the love of God, no!"_

"What? What?"

"She's pulling them out!" Lestrade exclaimed.

"Mrs. Kroger?!"

"No, the blooming Princess of Herrings! _Yes_, it's Mrs. Kroger! Oh, good God, I don't believe this!" Lestrade watched as the little woman solicitously directed her two menfolk into the maze of shacks and withy-huts down the walk. "I'll arrest her myself," he said under his breath. "Even if I have to make up a new word for the charge."

"Let me know if you need help coming up with that word," Watson vowed. "I'm getting rather good at writing lately."

"I imagine you are." Lestrade said with feeling. "How many synonyms did you come up with for 'infuriating consulting detective?" At the sight of the woman walking off, hand in hand with both (albeit shackled) men, Lestrade hemorrhaged into a new mode of language.

"Heavens, Lestrade!" Watson was horrified. "Does your wife know you can talk like that?"

Lestrade passed him a look of well-deserved contempt. "Who do you think taught me?" He wanted to know.

_**The Official Story:**_

_Holmes had, in the meantime, found the absolute line between what his nose could tolerate and proximity to Watson. He was studying both men with a strange blend of expressions on his face. "Then what happened after both of you fell into the Thames, my good fellow?"_

_Watson needed to think about it for a moment. "Well, it got a bit muddled for a bit, Holmes," he began carefully. "I'm afraid I can't be completely pertinent with all the details."_

"_Just…do go on, Watson. Do go on." Holmes was puffing furiously on his pipe. Perhaps it masked the smell coming off Watson._

"_Right…well…we thrashed about for a bit, and a cabin nearly ran us over a few times, which I thought was perfectly redundant as they were also trying to shoot us, but we managed to straighten all that out when Lestrade explained we had nothing to do with my patient's husband or her lover…"_

**What Really Happened:**

Watson blinked sooty water out of his eyes just in time to see looming death, coming up behind Lestrade. He gasped and ducked them both under the water just in time. A bullet hissed the water and took a chip of stone off the bank inches from Lestrade's face. The little detective came up for air as angry as Watson had _never_ seen him. If humans could be given an analogy to animals, Lestrade would be a hydrophobic hedgehog.

The cabin was turning; a young man with ashy brown hair and the familiar sallow complexion of a "London lifer" was steering broadside to the floundering swimmers. His left hand was trying to aim the revolver at them while his right hand managed the boat. Behind him, a grossly fat man in oilskins perched on a pile of strange, filthy-looking hides and drank from a gin bottle.

"You—"The steersman bellowed something; it made Mrs. Kroger sound like the epitome of fine speech and clear erudition. Watson had no idea what was being said; he was only conversant in French, Italian, Latin, Greek, and worse of all, Edinburgh English.

"Lestrade, what the devil did he just say to us? And why is he trying to kill us?!"

Lestrade spat water out. "He thinks we're Webster and McAlpin!" He sputtered.

"You _understood_ that?" Watson was impressed down to his bones.

"I understood the _gestures_!" Lestrade drew a visual bead on the struggling left-handed sniper, and didn't even bother to duck as the shot went wild. He sighed. "Bloody hell, now he's blocked the river!!"

Watson had no idea why Lestrade would place priority on a boat aligned athwartships with a river channel compared to being shot at by someone who couldn't shoot properly.

"_It is illegal to perform obstruction in highways, bridges or rivers!"_ Lestrade paused again to spit filthy water out from the middle of his diatribe. _"If you feel the need to perform such an activity, you must first file for a permit at your public Police-station!"_

For some unfathomable reason, it worked. The steersman blanched; he hurriedly stuffed his revolver into his coat and used both hands to wrench the cabin back to align with the current; he over-compensated; the cabin rocked against the opposite bank and bounced, ever so slightly. The drunken man on the pile of questionable things lost a few drops of gin and started swearing.

Lestrade caught Watson's expression. "They'll break the law, but paying a fine is a different matter," he explained wryly.

"Hold on, Inspector," Watson gasped. His hand sank into a weak spot in the bank and the lack of purchase sent him under again. In the meantime, the fool-headed steersman of the cabin was veering off down the river; the backwash of water came upon them in a wave and crested over their heads.

"Son of a—" Lestrade burst into some of the ripest language the doctor had _yet_ heard from the lips of _Homo sapiens_. Were circumstances not so severe, not to mention frightening, he would have been pressed to catalogue them for future reference. Perhaps a listing would be enough to pull Holmes out of his next Black Mood. "You flat!" He abruptly elevated his language to a higher plane: Said under breath: "("You sorry flummut flat!") Out loud and quite loudly: "It is in violation of the Thames Conservancy Act, 1864, to commit assault upon a man of the law in the River Thames, and subject to a fine of no less than five pounds!!" One last backwave threatened to dislodge the little detective, but he was holding on admirably; a tiny barnacle against a whale.

"Inspector," Watson gasped, "Are you trying to intimidate their pocket-books?"

"You'd be amazed how often that works!" Lestrade panted. "Where the sodding Sam Hill is Division K when you need them?!" A wave made him cough. "One more player to this mess and we'll have a qualified riot!"

Watson wondered where Lestrade had picked up a phrase like "Sodding Sam Hill" and decided that the 'vacation' he was at last year had something to do with Pinkerton Yanks. If that was the case, it was no wonder he returned from said 'vacation' looking much worse than he had before.

_**The Official Story:**_

"_Explain nothing," Lestrade snapped. "You forgot to mention the captain of that bloody cabin was your patient's _brother_! Wouldn't that make a bit more sense in your recollection??"_

"_If you want to be wholly pertinent," Watson shot back, "you could mention my patient's father's role in all of this too."_

"_The (curse word) I will!" Lestrade exclaimed. "This is unbelievable enough!"_

"_It's still the truth," Watson riposted. A fresh wave of what had been triple-distilled French plum brandy emanated outward._

"_Watson, do you have any idea what this is going to sound like in front of a jury?" Lestrade was dying to know. "All right, we'll discount your patient's father--for now. The bottom-fact is, we were trying to stay afloat without getting driven under the Thames by the cabin, and once the fool stopped trying to steer over us, we had managed to get to the bank when the (explicative deleted) suffragists started throwing their bloody cricket bats at us—" Lestrade gulped for air. _

**What Really Happened:**

"My God," Watson said in wonder. "He's actually turning away." They watched, amazed as the wooden juggernaut slowly managed its way up the river. Lestrade prayed the wind would not shift and bring him back. "You know, Lestrade, I don't think that man was _completely_ right in the head."

"Do tell." Lestrade said with an admirable self-possession. "Shooting left-handed to the right, while steering right-handed is what clued you?"

"Well, not that specifically…he had the slight…he looked like he was a bit on the mentally deformed side." Watson made the gesture, one-handed, to indicate a birth defect.

"I'll keep that in mind when I'm arresting him, doctor…Up you go." Lestrade braced himself with his good foot and made a stepladder of his laced fingers. Watson grimaced at the indignity of not being the one to offer the service first (policemen and soldiers were unapologetic about their rivalry), and conceded the point. He stepped awkwardly upward, hanging on to every purchase he could find with his cold hands. Lestrade could grip harder, but he still had on his thin leather gloves.

More or less, they staggered to the bank and gasped out their relief. For a few moments—or minutes—the men just rested there, staring up at what passed for a cheerful London sky: an impression of the sun existed behind the cloudbank.

Lestrade recovered first. He sat up and fumbled in his pockets. "Here." He produced a small hip flask. "I'm not a doctor, but I think we should try to kill some of the germs we ingested in the river."

Watson sniffed the flask suspiciously, no doubt thinking of the rumors of what Bradstreet carried in his flask, and popped his eyebrows up. "White brandy? My word, Lestrade."

"If it's expensive, I'm less tempted to indulge." Lestrade pointed out. "Besides, it was a Christmas gift. Half of it is yours."

"Sconce." Watson saluted, and promptly obeyed. He visibly relaxed as he handed the flask back. "Good heavens, Lestrade. There shouldn't be a germ alive in my body _now_."

"Here's to you," Lestrade topped his own portion. He too, visibly relaxed; both men were thinking of the hostile bacteria in their bodies, aggressively smothered out by a substance even worse.

"All right, then…" Lestrade got to his feet—Watson wondered where the devil he could find his energy; perhaps small people carried less pull of gravity? He pulled out his gun and stared ruefully at the uselessness of the weapon now. River silt and clay had clogged the barrel. "We need to go find K-Division's Inspector Lewis. He'll know how to round up these sterling examples…" He lifted his head, suddenly alert. "Watson, when you saw to Mrs. Kroger's treatment, where did you find her?"

Watson waved backwards. "She was standing in the doorway of that withy-hut woven between those two buildings."

"But that's the same hut _Webster_ came out of," Lestrade protested. "Why did she ape all vague on us?"

Watson frowned. "I…that's a good question, Inspector."

"This is starting to stink, and I don't mean fish or low-tide." Lestrade grumbled. He reached for his missing bowler, and settled for just marching to the hut, bare-headed. Watson's paranoia about the safety of his fellow man sent him to the little man's side.

"Well, if that just doesn't suit it all," Lestrade was kneeling inside the shack, his voice muffled.

Watson peered over his shoulder. "What is it?"

"Dog-skins." Lestrade held up the hide of a stone-heavy dog. Where the feet would have been a loop of leather went around, almost like a cuff. "It would appear Mrs. Kroger and her husband are working for a dog-smuggling ring."


	8. The Art of Reports, Part 3

"Smuggling _dog-skins_?" Watson was staring. He felt entitled. As far as the eye could see in the small shack, the skins were universally of one-stone dogs who were black or mostly black, some tailless, and all double-coated. He couldn't think of a single reason why someone would want to commit a crime with the things.

"No; smugglers take a dog of the same breed that's smaller, or they starve it almost to death, and wrap contraband around it, the cover it with the false skin. Something like lace…" Lestrade frowned. "But _lace_ smuggling isn't profitable any more. Not even the _blonde_ lace is worth all the trouble." He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "Hold on, now, that doesn't make a bit of sense!" He exclaimed.

Watson (so far) didn't see much sense in _any_ of this. "What?" He demanded.

"This…these are shipperkes!" Lestrade held up the skin of the dog in question. "These are all shipperkes!"

"Er, ah…Lestrade…I don't know what that means." Watson blushed to admit it.

There were times when Lestrade was abruptly reminded that, much as Watson loved London, he was not _born_ to it. There would always be small but significant portions of his education that were missing. Dog breeds and the cutthroat, hedonistic, utterly selfish world of dog breeders were a part of that education.

Unlike Holmes, Lestrade wasn't impatient with ignorance. "They didn't exist before 1880. They're bred in Flanders to rat-out pests on the canal boats. They're also sold for guarding boats and they travel well…" His voice trailed off. "I saw my first shipperke at a show the year before you and Holmes met up…this is strange," he reiterated. "The breed's too _young_ to squander for their hides! _What's going on here?"_

"They pull these hides over the smaller dog and send it across with its goods?" Watson had caught on. He wasn't stupid. "But wouldn't the dog still look different enough to raise suspicion?"

"It's long-distance smuggling, doctor. If you can't train a dog to go across the mountain range, or something similar, you can always train them to herd a flock of sheep. If you use coloured flocks, like Shetlands or Orkneys, it'll confuse the eyes. They also picked the twilight times where it's not as easy to pick out small details."

"Somehow, the stuff of romance doesn't mention interesting little facets such as this," Watson commented.

"Never does." Lestrade sighed. "Give me a hand here; there should be some sort of clue as to what they were using the skins for…"

Watson stepped carefully to the edge of the shack, his nose wrinkling at the particular odours.

"Doesn't make sense," Lestrade was muttering. "Smuggling from the estuary is always taken to the _north_ shore!"

"Why the north?"

"Water-smugglers obey the demands of the water. It's faster, quiet, and thus lowers the risk." Lestrade was running his fingers across the cured skins on the underside and then through the long fur with a bright interest that Holmes would have recognized. "These smuggling routes have been in service for over half a millennia."

"Do the routes never change, then?" Watson wondered.

Lestrade paused, and gave the other man a thoughtful look.

"Yes, they do." The small man mused. "They shift, adapt, and take advantage of the current situation of environment and political scheme. They'll even transfer the goods from the river to an overland passage, but that's the riskiest of all methods; it's slower, more awkward…" His voice trailed off. "We're on the wrong side for a north-bank transaction," he said softly. "What if they sending goods from _over the land_ to _the estuary?"_

"You just said that was the riskiest method," Watson protested. "What would inspire them to take such a course of action?"

"What if the goods were worth the risk? They'd be--_hah_!" His yelp of triumph sent Watson to his side. "Webster can put that in his pipe and smoke it!" Lestrade held up a small object lodged in a cranny of hide. Watson's jaw dropped.

"Gold smugglers?!" Watson gasped.

"Not just any gold." Lestrade returned his long fingers to inspecting the thick, matted hair of the pelt. "Clogau gold, doctor. The most desired, expensive, and precious gold in Europe! This is a matter for the CID!"

"I don't follow you," Watson protested. "If the hides are used to mask gold-smuggling, and you said the goods were sandwiched between the living dog and the dead dog's pelt…how is it you found that bead sewn inside the fur?"

"The smugglers are just the delivery-agents. Looks to me they're skimming a bit off the merchandise and paying themselves an aggravation tax for their troubles." Lestrade had picked up three more small beads. He shook his head. "Virtue among thieves…This is red gold, no mistake. Welsh copper is the _only_ cause for _that_ colouring. This is _serious_, doctor! _All_ Welsh gold is under Royal patronage!"

"Perhaps we'd best seek some assistance," Watson said cautiously.

"What do you think I've been trying to do?" Lestrade wanted to know. He rose to his feet and stuffed the small bits of evidence inside his water-logged watch, behind the case. "My revolver's useless until I can clean it out; did you bring your iron?"

"In the bottom of my medical bag," Watson breathed. He turned and hurried to barrel-table by the broken fire-pit.

_**The Official Story:**_

"_Suffragists!" Holmes repeated. In another world, Lestrade would have been a bit flattered to have the Great Detective hanging off his every word. "Lestrade, you and Watson completely missed the part about the suffragists!"_

"_We _didn't_ miss that part, Holmes, for heaven's sake!" Watson protested; his reporting abilities were under question. "They didn't show up until that moment! Give us a bit of credit!"_

**What Really Happened:**

"Doctor!"

Perhaps being waterlogged in a chilly river had slowed Watson's reflexes. Or the half-flask of brandy. It was _Lestrade's_ turn to warn his companion of danger from behind; Watson looked up just as the look of astonished horror spread over the detective's face.

Old campaigner's instincts, once won, never quite leave. Watson threw himself down just as a large wooden object whistled through the air and landed with less than grace into the firepit. Hot ash and sparks burst everywhere.

"There they are!" The tall woman in the crowd of dismayingly athletic-looking women with large tin badges on their coat-lapels pointed at the men. "You scoundrels! The Daughters of the Iceni have you now! What do you have to say for yourself?!"

It was at this precise moment that Lestrade's brain-attic regurgitated that dusty little fact he'd been rooting for, before his rude interruption:

**Daughters of Iceni:**

_Aggressive social-works group named after Queen Boudicca's tribe. _

Primary goals_: Revolution against male oppressors; inflexible policy, with the "if not for, then against" attitude causing irrevocable chasm between DOI and everyone else; Prohibition and destruction of all forms of alcohol; mandating Celtic history and at least one Celtic language in public school education; extreme suffragists;, demanding trousers for women; separate female colleges; death penalty for assaulting female; intoxication; failure to respect females in general._

_Analogies to Roman Empire used in said group's language when criticizing government. _

"Queen Victoria"_ euphemism for _"pawn of the oppressors"._ See also, King Prasutagus as Queen Victoria is generally seen as inheritor of Queen Boudicca's regime._

"_Romans__" code word for __government authorities_

_Government authorities disappearing with alarming frequency in areas known to be used by DOI; DOI being used by CID as double acroynmyns for "Daughters of Iceni" as well as "Dunned On Ice."_

_Twelve PCs, three Inspectors, and four Pinkerton Detectives missing in the line of duty since DOI's creation two years ago _(Lestrade's mind paused and re-played that portion of his mental grammophone over the "three Inspectors").

_Pinkertons with Irish last names suspected to be susceptible to bribes and moved to Nova Scotia with large purses._

_Twenty-four cases of conspiracy, due to assembling under the definition of "riot" passed before the courts in twenty-five months. Nineteen felony cases due to re-convening conspirist and unlawful assemblies one hour after initial reading of the Riot Act._

**Definition of "riot" as hammered into the lowliest Constable on the beat:**

"_A tumultuous disturbance of the peace by three or more persons assembling together of their own authority with an intent mutually to assist one another against any who oppose them, in the execution of some enterprise of __a private nature, and afterwards actually executing the same __in a violent and turbulent manner to the terror of the people"._

**CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS DEPARTMENT (CID) Recommendations: Treat with caution. Always call for assistance. Consider perpetrators as you would the slightly mad. ****Retreat if outnumbered****.**

All things considered, Lestrade was perfectly within his rights to choose the course of action that he did.

"Doctor Watson!" He screamed. "_Run_!"

_**The Official Report:**_

_Holmes came as close to speechless as Lestrade had ever seen. What a pity Lestrade wasn't completely sober to fully canonize the memory. "Watson, accept my apologies." He said in a remarkably even voice. "Please continue. Suffragists were throwing cricket bats at you?"_

"_It was a full-frontal attack!" Lestrade exclaimed. "There were no less than thirty of them, with three bats each!"_

"_Well, I'm not certain we should _count_ that as an attack, Inspector." Watson said thoughtfully. "After all, they thought we were my patient's husband and lover—it seems he's just as violent as the husband, and the ladies were banding together to rescue one of their own—"_

**What Really Happened**:

"Daughters of Buddug!" The lead warmonger brandished one of the remaining two cricket-bats under her arm. "_Forward_! Eradicate the Romans! Those who dare to lay hands upon our sister must perish!"

Caught between the Thames and an army of _twenty…__**twenty-five**__…__**thirty**_…Lestrade stopped counting at thirty and tucked his head in as a wave of cricket bats clogged the air. Watson yelped and put his arms over his head to protect his still-bleeding skull.

_Holmes will kill me if anything happens to him_. Lestrade dashed to the doctor. His natural worry for a man he genuinely liked was balanced with the cold knowledge that if Watson ever saw injury in Lestrade's presence, Holmes would find _some_ way of making him live just long enough to regret not sacrificing himself for the doctor.

Where was he? Oh, yes. Caught between the Thames and—

"Dr. Watson, hurry!" Lestrade gasped. "We're safer back in the Thames!"

"Are you certain?!" Watson gasped.

Lestrade wordlessly smashed his fist through the air; a cricket-bat bounced off with that unique sound that human knuckles make when impacted against the flying flat surface of a slightly-used, linseed-treated Glamorgan willow-wood projectile.

"Ladies!" Watson saw the truth, but couldn't go down without a fight; he'd faced the modern version of the Golden Hoarde, after all. "We're not who you think we are!"

"You're a man, that's quite enough!" The third bat was being aimed.

Watson committed to the better part of valour. Lestrade covered the retreat. He aimed and flung; his precious notebook riffled through the air and slapped the vanguard's face. For someone who was quick enough to create harm, she was offended enough to receive it. She howled in outrage and ripped up the bat from another's grip to aim with. The Thames, black and opaque, had never looked so good. It wasn't until it was much too late that Lestrade realized they had made a fundamental mistake in calculations.

Never jump into the Thames without looking both ways first.

**The Official Story:**

"_It was a full-frontal attack!" Lestrade exclaimed. "There were no less than thirty of them, with three bats each!"_

"_Well, I'm not certain we should count that as an attack, Inspector." Watson said thoughtfully. "After all, they thought we were my patient's husband and lover—it seems he's just as violent as the husband, and the ladies were banding together to rescue one of their own—"_

"_That's when __**I**__ started to greatly worry about our survival, there, but did you have one bloody soot-tag worth of self-survival instinct? Good God, no, you were all determined to try to make peace with them!" Lestrade was shouting now, with what every Constable in A Division called "The Doom Finger" leveled on the tipsy doctor. "Make peace with violent suffragists! Are you bloody out of your sand-baked mind, Watson?! You can't take a large portion of London's population, which has been subjugated and abused for generations, allow them a bit of physical power, and not expect it to go to their heads! It takes years to iron out those tendencies! In the meantime, you stay far away!"_

"_Lestrade, honestly, if they'd only known we were there to help the woman…"_

"_Did you see them ever once stop to ask for our identification and purpose for being there?!" Lestrade roared. "Of course not! They were too busy trying to knock the eyeballs out of your sockets!" Lestrade chose that moment to yank the glove off his left hand and hold it up for inspection: The knuckles were burst and bleeding. "Does __**this**__ look like an example of the gentler sex, Doctor?!"_

_Watson sighed, and turned back to the breathless audience. "That was when we opted for the better part of valour and jumped back into the Thames."_

**What Really Happened:**

"Oh, my _God_!!"

Lestrade had less than half a second to absorb and react to Dr. Watson's exclamation. The emotional horror leached through the shock of a second dive of water that had begun as frozen snowmelt in the headwaters. _When did __**he**__ come back_? Lestrade had time to wonder, before he was plunging underneath the surface.

Bullets peppered the air. With the steersman in the opposite direction, he no longer had to aim cross-handed while he captained the cabin. From this direction, he was much more dangerous in his efficiency.

"Half _enough_!" Lestrade, goaded beyond belief, managed to tread water long enough to empty his pockets of everything he could use as a missile. His badge whistled through the air; it ricocheted off the helm, causing the idiot to flinch away for the moment it took to keep from aiming a course right over Watson; the wooden cabin veered, following the pull of the slowly-rising tide, and promptly began a slow twist of the keel that its makers had not designed it for.

"Down!"

Lestrade yanked Watson under the water. As filthy as the river was, it was God's Own Wonder they could even tell up from down. Watson, poor disadvantaged sod, was used to the cleaner trout-supportive water of Scotland. He had no experience whatsoever with life among Industrial effluence.

The detective opened his eyes underwater, knowing the sting of brine and chemicals would die away...soon enough. _Most_ forms of eye infections were treatable if reached soon enough...A familiar-shaped shadow winged through the air over the surface. It might have been greatly amusing outside this context; as it was, Lestrade grimaced (without losing the air supply in his lungs) as the cricket-bat connected with the cabin's steersman's chin in a medically significant way. He watched with a great deal of resignation as the man slumped over the side of the boat (but didn't actually fall in, worse luck).

He tugged at Watson's shoulder and the two broke surface on the other side of the wooden keel, gasping like trouts themselves.

"Hoot nae, Webster!" A strange, weirdly-accented voice clogged by equal parts beard and fossy-jaw echoed acros't the river. "I'll show ye to hedge intae the fambly business! Ye scourge one Kroger, ye scourge all a' ais!"

_I should just give up and drown now,_ Lestrade thought. The old man—the old, _drunk_ man, was at the helm to replace his unconscious son, and he was pulling on a fresh gin-bottle as he turned the craft around.

"Any ideas, doctor?" The detective wondered—might as well ask while they were staring incipient doom down its throat…

_**The Official Report:**_

"_It was much safer," Lestrade vouchsafed. "Floating bacterial mats and all…Because the son had been knocked unconscious by a flying cricket-bat, and his father was now at the helm, and I don't think he could see his own drunken hand in front of his face!"_

_Watson paused. "You noticed all that? I'm impressed."_

"_I don't exactly pause to write it all down when it's happening, thank you, but I do try to pay attention!"_

"_Well, at any rate, that was about the most exciting part about our day." Watson abruptly sank down as if someone had cut the strings out of his legs. "We had to let the current take us downstream out of the range of fire, and then it was a matter of keeping warm until the slaughterhouse closed." He paused to yawn. "Anything else?"_

"_For myself? I'm wondering how you're going to write all this up, Watson." Holmes spoke in a strange tone indeed._

"_Dashed if I know. Lestrade lost his notebook when he threw it at the suffragist riding point." Watson yawned again._

"_I wouldn't worry about it. No one's going to believe this mess anyway." Lestrade was being quite reasonable._

"_Very true."_

**What Really Happened:**

"Holy T'Anthony!"

Lestrade invoked the Patron of the undersized (he had a personal identification with the saint), and yanked Watson by his collar to the opposite shore—the shore opposite the rampaging suffragists, that is. Through what felt like a half-gallon of water in his ears, the little man heard what sounded like a sailor's mash of invectives, creative opinions, promises, and downright open threats to cause permanent bodily harm (and seven generation of future birth defects) to someone who proclaimed to be loyal to his female flesh, but still committed the capital offense of public intoxication.

Mr. Kroger, senior, held an alcohol-slurred yet rather clear response to such words. Lestrade marveled he had enough blood in his body for blushing, but at least that meant he could resist incipient death by dropped body-temperatures.

"Gllkk!" Watson tried to breathe as he was towed across the broad current by his collar; Lestrade mentally apologized, but held out for a few more seconds while hauling him to the relative safety of the other side of the bank. Luckily for Watson, Lestrade had plenty of experience with strong-arming men who were much larger, stronger (and potentially) more prone to panic. More bullets struck as they went underneath the water; something heavy and wooden-ish echoed in the policeman's mind, but there was no time to pause and reflect. He grimaced and with a last spurt of energy, pulled Watson into the shore.

"What the devil!" Watson had been limited to a backwards-view of the river during his rescue. His eyes were as large as walnuts. Part in dread, Lestrade turned, gasping, to see that the cabin was lurching its way back around in a turn. The side that had been facing the (still) angry suffragists was much the worse for wear with cricket-bat scars, and…

_My eyes must be going bad,_ Lestrade thought. _Otherwise, I'd be willing to swear that—_

"Inspector!" Watson gasped. "That fool managed to shoot his own boat open!"

Years later, while recounting the events of the adventure known as "The Hound of the Baskervilles", Watson would regret to the core of his soul that he hadn't noticed the look of abject terror on Lestrade's face when the pack of furious, long-toothed shipperke dogs ran off the deck of the sinking cabin right into their faces. His first indication of the little man's fear (the _only_ fear Watson had ever seen him display) had been when the horrible smuggler's ship had disgorged its cargo into their faces. Had he thought about it, he would have pulled Holmes aside and whispered a few words of caution. As it was, he would always feel guilt for not doing so.

Lestrade, for his part, had innocently assumed that Watson had _already_ known about his cynophobia due to his close proximity with the Great Detective; he didn't know _why _they thought he was worth trusting in the matters of a bloody great Devil Dog that glowed in the dark, but if they _thought_ he was all right with the show, it was good enough for him. Afterwards, however, he did note that Watson was weirdly solicitous of his welfare.

For the present, facing down the pack of fear-fueled, slathering shipperkes, Lestrade's first reaction was to throw his arms over his face and go under the water. Watson would always regret not following suit.


	9. The Art of Reports, Part 4

**What Really Happened:**

A rain of bullets and small hand-held horns ripped the air the third time Lestrade and Watson came up for the risk of air. By this time, a great deal of screaming was going on. Lestrade paused to wheeze until he could collect something of his old composure; he curled his cupped fingers over his mouth and whistled through them. The strange sound traveled through the air and it was apparently discernible to the other members of the Force. Within minutes the Thames River Police, Stepney (Division K) were swarming over the banks and hauling them out to (comparatively) dry land.

"Migod, Geoff! I thought I heard your whistle!" Lewis was easily identifiable, even to Watson's layman's eyes. A large metal badge for bravery hung about his neck over the collar of his pea-jacket, and he barely fit inside the large cut of his cloth. "Lads!" Lewis turned his head to bark at his constables. "You ever hear anything like that whistle, you come a-paddling! That's Lestrade's personal mark—seeing as how I can't think of anyone else who knows that heathen trick o'whistling in his hands without a grassblade!"

"H…hullo, Matt…" Lestrade said weakly. "What…have I...missed?"

"Lessn' we have!" Inspector Lewis proclaimed. "Who's yer mate, Geoff?"

"Inspector…Matthew…Lewis…meet…Dr. John Watson…Berkshires…" Lestrade gave up on talking at that point, and just spreadeagled against the trapezoid cobble bank.

"How…do you do?" Watson struggled to remember what _polite _meant at this point. It was a vague and distant memory indeed.

"_Berkshires_? Allow me to shake your hand sir—_Jefferson, __**kindly**__ pull out your bloody iron and shoot __**back**__, thank you!!_—excuse me, we're taking care of this for you, if you don't mind taking a breather, we'll get right back…"

Watson decided later he must have fainted. Or something similar. When he awoke there was sticking-plaster on the back of his head and Lestrade was sitting up and cursing at the fact that all of his equipment save his wallet had been lost in the Thames.

"Well if you used' em to fling at the enemy, you needn't worry, Geoff." Lewis pointed out calmly. "Let the tide go back down; I'll wager in a day or two we'll find em rising from the skim off a river-hole!"

"In the meantime, I'm out my badge!" Lestrade protested. He lowered his head into his knees. "Oh, good God…Who…who..who's in charge of sending reports to the superiors involving Conspiracy and illegal assembly and potential cases of treason?" Lestrade rose and clutched at Inspector Lewis' thick lapels with a feverish intensity. "For God's sake, give me a name, man!"

Lewis gulped. "I don't have a _name_, Goeffrey. Just an address in the Home Office…well, it might be the _Foreign _Office…for missives, updates, and telegrams."

"WHAT is the address?!" Lestrade was close to shaking the much-large man like a rag doll. After their day, Watson felt he was capable of doing such a thing.

Lewis wordlessly produced a tiny business-card printing on fine linen paper. "Lads!" He raised his voice. "Division K thanks you, and asks you to get yourselves warmed up." A Constable in a pea-jacket produced a gratuitously large jug of something that smelled like the worst distillate from Inspector Bradstreet's (theoretical) secret still.

"Just a moment," Watson protested. "Alcohol doesn't actually _prevent_ the drop in bodily temperatures; it dilates the blood vessels, I know…"

"Hang the bodily temperatures," Inspector Lewis cut in. "We're trying to kill the foreign bodies you two sucked in while you were bathing in Old Man Thames!"

Watson had no argument for that. Being polite, he let Lestrade kill half the bottle first. Fair was fair. This particular brew was a bit of a step down from French white brandy.

"They were in the drink a long time, sir." PC Rains said nervously. "How much should we give'm?"

"We serve it up until they need to sit down," Inspector Lewis said firmly. "The rule was good enou' in my day, it should be good enough in this one."

"What exactly is it?" Lestrade gulped unsteadily.

"Ah, I dunno." Lewis said, disingenuously. "Something the boys picked up. Depends on a live raisin and three parsnips to get it started…do you need a seconds?"

"Ah…no." Lestrade had already vomited a great deal of the river out of his stomach. The green tint to his face was thus rooted in other causes. "John, I do believe it's your turn." His voice, his eyes, his set of jaw, his overall demeanour dared Watson to protest his way out of it.

Watson swallowed hard. "Thank you, Inspector," he said with a gallantry that slid through his teeth.

And he picked up the jug.

"Need…an official dispatcher for this one…" Lestrade breathed. "Favor, Matt. Don't trust a telegram."

Lewis nodded; Watson wondered about the past the two men had shared. "Give us a moment, Geoff." He turned and lifted his head, barking orders. While the doctor was willing to swear that no one attached to the dog-capture or the criminal seizure had actually left the scene, _someone _must have because less than a quarter-hour later, a slender intense man in a fine black wool suit was kneeling in front of the half-collapsed Lestrade and taking his report in a hurried hand.

"Get that to the Main Office as fast as you can," Lestrade rasped.

"Theft of the Royal Gold is a serious matter,' the man agreed. He had the unmistakable tints of a half-caste Hindoo. "Do you have proof?"

"If you confiscate the dog-skins in that shack across the river…" Lestrade pointed steadily enough, but fumbled slightly at the finer workings of his watch. "Here is a sample of what we pulled out of the pelts…" He dropped the red-gold beads into the outstretched hands. "Also, don't forget…the leader referred to Buddug…that's the WELSH name for Queen Boudica…"

Intelligent, sparkling brown eyes glittered upon the bedraggled men. "We thank you, sirs. I will be certain to submit this report to the first parties who are disposed to empower decisions. It is, of course, your prerogative to choose how much you will tell your own superiors…"

Lestrade merely shrugged. "I'll just tell them I had another accident or somesuch." He said wearily. "They'll believe it if **I** say it. I'm not the smart one of the lot." He'd drunk _just _enough alcohol to kill the modesty-filter most Englishmen kept over their mouths.

"Very well," the little brown-skinned man agreed smoothly. "But I suggest you take another drink before you do go to your superiors. The river Thames is not quite on par with the Ganges, but it is considerable in its pollution."

"Yes, it is." Lestrade agreed, glassy-eyed. "Dr. Watson? I believe it's your turn to go for the next drop…"

_**The Official Story:**_

"_Hold up, just a moment, if you please," The Surreyman had a singular thought. "You didn't explain a few salient points to this story." Baynes observed. "You said you __didn't__ know the identity of the person who pushed you into the Thames, and you __didn't__ explain the part about the dogs."_

"_Ahem." Watson cleared his throat. "You know," he began carefully, "I really don't feel like discussing that at this particular moment. Do you, Lestrade?"_

"_No." Lestrade had his head in his hands. "I'd much rather talk about my missing iron, my missing club, my missing bloody whistle, my missing badge. I'll even talk about your missing medical bag before I'm up to talking about sodding canal dogs and common-law husbands of a uniquely illiterate bend."_

**What Really Happened:**

Thanks in part to a massive amount of alcohol that should have been rejected as wallpaper-remover, Lestrade and Watson were less than solidly footed as they made their way across London. Lestrade's depression over the state of his coat was miraculously cured at the recovery of his bowler hat—although Watson didn't know why he even bothered. The hat would need enormous rescue efforts to look like a hat again.

"What…do you think will happen?" Watson cleared his throat. It burned like a raw thing, but at least he could feel it. Strep was always a worry. The Marine police had given him a vile tincture of yellowroot in alcohol and water in an eye-cup so they could flush the impurities out of their eyes and down their Eustachian tubes; it seemed to help, but it had burned like the Devil's own breath the entire time.

"No idea." Lestrade said casually. "We submit our reports to those who observe these kinds of thing, and we let them take it over. If you ask me, _we_ have it easy; all we have to worry about is dodging bullets, rabid mongrels, crazed captains, and mad Amazons. _Those _poor woodscolts at the Office have to answer to the Higher-ups. I know where _I'm_ comfortable!" He paused and swayed slightly as he peered up, then down, the street. "Bother," he said under his breath. "We're going to have to wait until the slaughterhouse closes; the cabbies won't let us ride with them before that!"

"That would be…" Watson knew better than to consult his water-soaked watch. He thought back to the last time he heard the Bells of Stepney marking the quarter-hour. "That'll be a few hours from now. What are we supposed to do until then?"

"Keep warm." Lestrade grabbed Watson and propelled him toward a familiar looking tavern. "Keep warm, doctor. And always remember to blather about absolutely nothing when you're intoxicated. A few adventures in that example, and no one is going to believe you're capable of spilling state secrets."

"Blather, eh?" Watson was all for the game. "What do you recommend?"

"How many words can one employ when describing a half-mad consulting detective?"

"Not _that _many," Watson protested, but weakly, as the smaller man demonstrated an appalling strength borne of righteous convictions as he pushed him to the tavern. "Most of the words I found imply a deranged mental state!"

"So?" Lestrade wanted to know. "I fail to see the conflict."

**The Official Story:**

"_Er, I see…" Gregson cleared his throat. "You know, though, I'm looking forward to the report tomorrow, Lestrade."_

"_I'll keep that in mind, Euclid." Lestrade deliberately used Gregson's nickname in the presence of the strange man. "Now if anyone has no objections, I'm going to go inside and file a few reports before incipient pneumonia sets in with a rampaging case of _otitis_ media." He rose to his feet, wavering slightly, and plodded his way up the steps, one foot placed before the other. Stinking water tracked followed him inside.  
_

_Holmes watched him go; small wonder, everyone else was watching too. Watson had his eyes closed and was dozing his exhaustion peacefully against the rails._

**What Really Happened:**

All things considered, Mycroft had to revise his impression of the day. The men Sherlock had appeared to approve of _were_ skilled, but there was a quality to their intelligence that Mycroft did not at that moment, feel like tolerating. He saw it enough in his little brother; he saw it every day in his office. What he wanted, he now realized, was someone who could recognize their small role in the scheme of things was as important as a large role. These men were gifted in departments and divisions that saw his influence but rarely. He would be foolish to take their attention away from their native skills. Diverting such men from areas would bring him a scolding from the Prime Minister.

Perhaps it was fortuitous and serendipitous that the man who wrote such an enjoyable report to his desk that day was also the same one who staggered, punch-drunk (as well as genuinely drunk) out of the cab and onto the bottom steps of the Yard, with what _had_ to be Dr. Watson in tow. Mycroft would have recognized the man anywhere where from his brother's descriptions. Watson was obviously unable to recognize anything past the first two yards from his face; he soon slumped against the newel-post and began to slip into the sleep of the just; throughout it all, neither he nor Lestrade had betrayed their actions in a governmentally questionable endeavor.

**The Official Story:**

_A large hand tapped his shoulder. "Sherlock," the big man said._

"_Yes, brother?"_

"_I believe I've found my liaison."_

_Holmes was horrified. Temporarily. Mycroft had been wrong perhaps twice in his entire life, and one of those times had yet to be borne out. It was not his place to question the depths of genius. "Are you certain?" He hissed under his breath. "You met Gregson and Baynes; they're much smarter."_

"_Compared to whom?" Mycroft Holmes wanted to know without any false pride. "I need someone who has the emotional capacity to withstand adversity. Are you saying facing ninety flying cricket-bats by disgruntled suffragists doesn't qualify a man?" And not a single word about the stolen Welsh gold. Quite an admirable bit of story-telling._

_Holmes sighed. "I'll leave it to you to speak with him," he said at last. He knew he was washing his hands of the affair, but honestly, if Mycroft needed a go-between for the sundry affairs between the Yard and the Home Office, he could manage it himself._

**What Really Happened:**

Mycroft smiled to himself. No one even knew who he was; yet. Once he settled to his "partial retirement" he could take on a more public role that would deflect some attention off his successor. But for now…

"I shall leave it to you to see the good doctor home, Sherlock." He suggested. "He looks quite the worse for wear. I only regret I'll not hear the full story of his day…but you will appraise me if he discloses any of the finer details?"

Sherlock sighed, resigned. Shaking their heads, Gregson and Baynes were returning inside from the cold. Gregson struck him as someone who would be useful among the department of organized crime. Baynes would bear some cultivating…yes, the two men were quite promising…

"Pass this on to Lestrade, would you?" Mycroft passed his personal card over to his brother. Sherlock winced again, no doubt thinking of the men who would better suit the particular role being sought, but he knew better than to question his brother's final decision.

_Author's Note: Lestrade and Mycroft working together couldn't have been a random happenstance…Mycroft wouldn't blow his own nose without an appointment! So consider all this the "ordinary meeting" in which Mycroft first met Lestrade…_


End file.
